CHAPTER 32: Grand Gestures
Later that day Elleigh had returned from her gift shop haul with Finn, Colin and Robert. Logan's friends quickly came by to see him when they brought Elle back to his hospital room. However, they didn't hang around for long before departing again; leaving the small, dysfunctional family to be alone.
Funded by Colin and his willingness to purchase just about anything for whatever reason, Elle hauled back a 'baby boy' helium balloon (they were out of 'get well soon' balloons and Elleigh was insistent on getting him one), an enormously overpriced teddy bear and a box of Lindt chocolates (that she's hoping he will share around).
Currently, Elleigh is sitting beside Logan on his hospital bed, telling him all about the book that she's reading at the moment. Sitting on the seat in the corner of the room, Rory watches the father and daughter conversing together before getting a rude shock when she checks the time on her phone.
"It's getting late. We should get you home soon, little miss. You have school tomorrow and both you and your dad both need some rest" Rory says getting up from the chair in the corner of the room, walking over to the father and daughter, running her hand through Elle's long, blonde hair lovingly.
The comment from her mother is immediately met with an unimpressed look of disapproval from Elle.
"I don't want to go... Please let me have a late night tonight and stay with dad for a bit longer."
"Remember, I'm the one who has the pleasure of getting you up in the morning."
Logan sits back and watches the banter between the girls as a spectator. A part of him still can't believe that his college girlfriend is a mother to a nine-year-old... That she's a mother to his nine-year-old.
Watching the duo, Logan can easily see the same dynamic and the same strong bond between his daughter and her mother as between Rory and her own mother.
"You should listen to your mom, Nance. You can come back and see me after school tomorrow and tell me all about your day."
Hearing the same thing that her mother had just said being reaffirmed by her father, Elle is still no happier with the idea of having to leave and the little frown on her face doesn't shift. Instead, she just lets out a little huff, looking to her mother to set some terms and conditions to try and get her way for tomorrow at least, seeing as she's fighting a losing battle over tonight.
"Then we can come back straight after I finish school tomorrow? And I can stay until after dinner again?"
"Yes, if that's okay with your dad and as long as he doesn't get too tired" Rory says with a nod. Glancing over to Logan she knows full-well that there's no doubt that he'd be fine with the requests of the little girl who is completely wrapped around his little finger.
Despite a very brief grin of triumph, Elle lets out another sigh after feeling the nudge on her shoulder from her mother, gently reminding and encouraging her that they need to leave.
"Bye sweetheart. Sleep well" Logan says, before releasing a yawn on cue as he watches his daughter squirm off from where she'd been sitting at the bedside of his hospital bed, joining her mother where she stands beside it.
"Dad... Will it hurt you if I try to give you a hug?"
From where she'd been cowering in the corner, Rory suddenly jolts into action; trying to stop her daughter from giving Logan a hug, knowing all too well that a hug with two broken ribs would be far from pleasant.
Logan notices Rory's reaction and before she has a chance to say a word, he speaks up, quashing her attempt to stop their daughter.
"Let her, Ace" he says to Rory, before turning to the other girl in his hospital room who he directs his following admonition to.
"Try me. Let's give it a shot. It'll be worth it."
Elleigh gives Logan a wary look, uncomfortable with any chance that she might hurt her father, but only receiving an encouraging smile to put her at ease and reassure her.
From where's she standing beside Logan and his bedside, the nine-year-old reaches over as she very delicately and very gently gives her father a hug goodnight. Despite how soft she tries to be, Rory notes how Logan's eyes squint shut in pain from his small hug with their daughter before the two pull apart from each other.
"Sweet dreams, girls" Logan says to his newly-rekindled girlfriend and their daughter as they begin to leave his room for the night.
After saying her goodbyes, Rory is almost out of the room, before Elle stops and rushes back in and over to her father once more. She races over and gives Logan a quick kiss on his cheek, followed by the words that make his day.
"Goodnight dad... I love you."
Hearing those three words coming from his daughter for the very first time instantly swells his heart with love.
His heart could beat out of his chest.
Logan never knew that hearing those three little words could make him so happy; filling him pride and affection... He didn't think it was possible for him to love that little girl even more than he already does.
"I love you too, sweetheart."
#
After dropping Elleigh off at school, followed by a quick detour past Luke's, Rory is back at the hospital with Logan early the following morning.
Quickly knocking on the open door to announce her preserve, Rory quickly notes that the nurse is in with Logan at the moment.
"Hey Ace" Logan grins, his face lighting up at the sight of his visitor.
With a smile in his direction and a general good morning, Rory directs her first comment at Logan's nurse.
"I hope he's behaving himself. I know full well that he's not the most angelic patient in the world."
"Me? Behaving myself? Always, Ace, always..."
Logan gives a wild grin to both women in the room; firstly looking at the girl who knows him far better than to believe his words and then, to the nurse who knows that he had been just grumbling about hospitals to her just minutes earlier.
"You're looking brighter this morning."
Logan gives Rory a quick smile at her comment, before turning to his nurse with a smirk. "See, I'm ready to go home now."
The nurse simply just rolls her eyes with a chuckle. "Nice try, but all of your test results still haven't come in yet. You'll be stuck here for a few more days, I'm sorry."
Despite her words, the tone of the nurse's voice shows that she is anything but sorry. She quickly leaves the room after her comment, fleeing from the whining entrepreneur and leaving the new couple alone.
"Hi..." Logan says with a grin, fully focused on his visitor now that his nurse has left. "How'd it go with getting our girl to school? You didn't have to take her kicking and screaming, did you?"
"She didn't want to get out of bed but aside from a few unimpressed looks and eye rolls for making her go to school rather than take her with me, she wasn't too bad. I've seen worse from her."
Logan wordlessly nods in acknowledgment to Rory's answer to his question, before gesturing to the small amount of space beside him on the hospital bed, indicating for her to join him there.
"You sure?" Rory confirms, before joining Logan on his bedside, cosying up together while they have some alone time. "This is starting to feel like sneaking around in our early days at Yale..."
"So, when do you think we should start telling people –namely our daughter- about this?" Logan asks Rory, gesturing to the closeness of their bodies as they cuddle up on his hospital bed together to clarify the 'this' in question.
Rory stays silent for a few moments, thinking over Logan's question as well as the different outcomes that each answer may have.
"I hate the idea of keeping things from her, but I feel like we need to give it a little bit of time just to make sure we think that we'll be able to make it work this time. She's going to become so invested in the idea us being together and it's not fair on her if we get her hopes up only to make them crash down in a matter of months if we can't make it this time."
Logan nods definitively. He can definitely see the point that she's making and he can relate to wanting to do anything to keep his daughter from being hurt.
"I agree. So, how long do you think we are talking wits keeping it to ourselves?"
"A month or so? Maybe six weeks? I think it'll just depend on how sure we are and how long it takes to be confident that we're going to last."
Although he's in agreement with Rory over keeping their relationship under wraps until they are surer of their future, he can't help feel a little twinge of discomfort. The prospect of keeping their relationship from everyone and especially their daughter seems impossibly hard to Logan... Yet, it's just a sore reminder to him of just how good Rory is it at keeping things.
Rory takes Logan's silence as the end of that conversation, so she moves onto the next, raising another question for them to discuss.
"So apart from not being able to go home today, do you know roughly how long you're going to have to stay in here?"
"No clue. I've been given a few different timeframes. I'm hoping I'll be out by the end of the week."
Rory nods in response to his answer, before bringing up another question on her mind relating to his being discharged.
"So, what are you going to do when you get home? Half of your house and half of your stuff is on one storey and the rest of it is on the other storey."
"Grow wings? Learn to fly?" Logan smirks, responding cheekily to Rory's serious question regarding his predicament of getting up and down his stairs with broken ribs from the accident.
"Logan..." Rory whines. "You better watch yourself or you're going to end up with another broken rib at this rate. The nurses and I will fight each other for the honour."
He only grins at her frustration, her reaction fuelling his satisfaction.
"Wipe that grin off your face Huntzberger..." Rory pouts.
"I'm sorry... Just mucking around, blame my meds" he releases a small, uncomfortable chuckle before he tries to readjust himself, growing more serious in the process. "Okay, seriously though, I haven't thought about it too much. I thought about hiring someone to prepare the spare room downstairs and then hiring a nurse or maid or something to fetch things I need. Either that or install an elevator."
Rory nods, looking distantly across the room, rather than at Logan during their conversation as she considers an idea that has been floating around in her mind for the last day.
"Why, Ace? What's going on in that head of yours?"
"What if I look after you? Like you said, you're going to need someone to get things, move things, fluff your pillows, listen to your grumbles, etcetera, etcetera... What if that person's me? We'll have about six hours a day alone, while Elle's at school. It'd give us a great opportunity to hang out, talk and really try and give us a good shot without the pressure and without anyone knowing."
Logan nods at Rory's proposition, thinking the offer and the logistics of it over for a few moments, although the slight smile on the corner of his lips calls his poker face on what he's really thinking about the idea.
"But what about your work? What about the paper?"
"You live in Stars Hollow... The commute from your place into the paper isn't quite the same for me as it is for you going into New York. I can bring my laptop over, work while you're resting and I can pop past the office if I need to get anything or do anything. It won't put me out too much to work from your place."
Logan looks at her intently, waiting to see more confirmation from her before he commits to the idea, or believes that she has committed to the idea.
He finds the confirmation that he needs to accept her offer as she takes his non-fractured hand as they sit beside each other on his hospital bed. She grasps his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze of reassurance.
"I want to do this. It makes sense. And, I think this will be good for us."
Finally, Logan nods in response to her offer, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
"Thanks, Ace" Logan says seriously and gratefully, before a ripple of a smirk spreads across his lips, leaving Rory dreading what comes next. "Besides, it would have been a task for me to try and find a hotter nurse than you..."
Rory rolls her eyes at Logan's comment but before she has a chance to threaten him with another broken rib, they are both interrupted by Logan's phone going off, receiving a text message.
She grabs his phone from where it's sitting on the small bedside cabinet and immediately passes it on to Logan, saving him the discomfort of trying to move unnecessarily with his broken ribs, fractured wrist and abundance of bruising.
"Who is it?" Rory asks curiously as she watches the look on Logan's face from the sidelines.
From the moment Logan looked at his phone and at the message, she saw the puzzlement hit his expression. Immediately, his forehead scrunches and his brows furrow. She wants to know who or what can elicit such a reaction in her boyfriend so quickly.
"My dad... Hey Ace, do you mind grabbing the paper on the table-top over there? I thought that a nurse had brought that in earlier, but that may not be the case..."
Rory doesn't hesitate in hopping off the bed and fetching today's newspaper from where it's sitting on the other side of the room. When she returns to his bedside and finds her spot beside him, Logan shows her the message from his father.
"Logan, I hope you're improving. I will be in to see you again today, or if not, tomorrow. The paper should be left in your room by now. Page 65. Dad."
Reading the message, Rory's face scrunches up just as she had watched Logan's do minutes ago.
"Your dad even sounds like your dad in his messages. I never knew texts could boom like that..." Rory comments, but Logan is distracted as he awkwardly tries to singlehandedly thumb his way through the newspaper to reach page sixty-five; the page number that the elusive message had mentioned.
When page sixty-five –around the births, deaths and marriages section of the paper- is finally found and opened up to, both Rory and Logan instantly and simultaneously let out a little gasp and look to each other, eyes dilated.
Page sixty-five of one of Mitchum Huntzberger's Huntzberger Publishing Group-owned newspapers opens to a huge half-page spread and birth announcement.
'Mitchum and Shira Huntzberger are delighted to finally announce the birth of their grandchild, Lorelai Elleigh Gilmore, born on the 12th of December 2007 to her parents, Logan Elias Huntzberger and Lorelai Leigh Gilmore.'
Both Logan and Rory stare and gawk at the page in today's newspaper, announcing their daughter in the biggest way possible before Rory finally breaks the silence and speaks.
"A belated birth announcement for Elle..? That's crazy... He spoke to me in the waiting room while we were all waiting for you to wake up. He asked me if he could tell others about her. I guess this is what he meant..."
"Well I guess it's technically still a birth announcement, just ten years after the fact..."
Looking between the man beside her, then to the newspaper in front of them and back again, a grin just unfolds across Rory's lips before she speaks up again.
"After all this time, I suddenly see where you get your penchant for grand gestures from..."
Logan rolls his eyes, knowing that she knows he's far from impressed at being compared to his father. He ignores her comment and doesn't retort, knowing he'd only be giving her the satisfaction for her tease and instead he focuses back on the article.
"Now, I'm not quite sure because I don't exactly recognise the concept, but I think that this may be what Mitchum Huntzberger extending an olive branch looks like... If that's the case, then I feel like we can deduce that the world is coming to an end..."
Okay... How many times in how many different languages can I say 'I'm sorry'? Because, I want to shout it from the rooftops. I am SO sorry for how long this chapter has taken to get up. The problems is that it doesn't even feel like that long since I last updated but time has just flown by. I don't know if anyone's still reading and I don't know if anyone is still interested in this story... Either way, I hope the next chapter will be up in a fraction of the time it took this one to go up.
Also, I'd like to thank everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter, before my enormous hiatus.
Next chapter: Logan returns home, giving himself and Rory time to reacquaint themselves with each other better.