While You're Making Other Plans

by Glistening Sun and Miss Shannon

25

"It really is a small miracle that they let me stay," Gavin told Sharon, his arm protectively around her waist as they took small, careful steps down the hallway. She had been eager to get out of bed while the sheets were being changed to take a small walk inside the hospital building, but now she had to admit that fighting the fever had worn her body out. She felt heavy and was aching all over still. "I mean, after what happened, they would have been within their rights to put me out on my ass."

Sharon couldn't help but smile at the memory, as embarrassing as it had been. The doctor with the striking eyes had seemed strange to her with his disconcerting smile and creepily soft tones, so she had protested as he had inserted the unknown medication into her IV-line. For a moment, her instincts had taken over and she had screamed, terrified that he was somehow connected to Stroh and out to hurt her and her unborn child. Gavin had chosen that precise moment to walk in and to find her frightened in her bed with the mysterious doctor by her side, syringe still in hand.

Gavin was not a violent man. In fact, the way he had reacted had shown just how little he knew about fighting. Lunging at the man in the white lab coat like a football player, he had thrown him to the ground, causing him to bang his head on the side of the hospital bed. Down on the floor, some shuffling had gone on until the fight had been broken up by two other doctors who had informed them that the doctor in question was not an accomplice to anyone be it Stroh or any other villain as he was simply an intern with a bedside manner that left something to be desired. Apologies had been exchanged all around and Gavin had given the man his card, promising to take him out for a drink to make up for the black eye he was beginning to sport. Even as emotions were running high, Gavin never missed an opportunity to secure a date.

Sharon stopped in her tracks when the baby kicked her hard. She was still feeling so tender that it actually hurt. Gavin had stopped too and seemed to understand what was bothering her. Carefully placing his hand over her belly, he searched for the little foot and nudged it when it kicked again.

"Be nice to Mommy," he said. "She doesn't have it easy."

That was an understatement and it made tears well up in Sharon's eyes. "What if Rusty is dead? What if Andy is dead?" she asked tearfully. "They are as much my family as Ricky and Emily and I couldn't bear to lose any of them. Oh, Gavin. What if...?"

Gavin had long since run out of encouraging things to say and the comic relief his unnecessary fight with the intern had brought about was once again overshadowed by the reality of what was happening. You couldn't be upset perpetually, Sharon knew. The mind always recovered in between and then, when it all came back in a rush, one was hit even harder.

She leaned into Gavin's side more heavily as the familiar dizziness brought on by the treatment once again had her in its grip. Her head was swimming and she felt as if the floor was tilting beneath her feet. "Oh God, I think I'm going to be sick," Sharon murmured, already embarrassed by what she was sure was about to happen, but then, fortunately, the nausea passed as quickly as it had overcome her.

There was a comforting hand on her shoulder, that she thought probably belonged to a friendly hospital staffer who was going to help Gavin get her back to her room. Sharon was about to let him lead her away but then she froze. There was that familiar scent! Her breath caught in her throat. She lifted her head from where she had been pressing it against Gavin's upper arm in an attempt to shut out the world around her, still not daring to turn around and destroy the beautiful illusion.

"Hey, Sweetheart," a familiar voice said into her ear. "Take it easy, okay?"

"Andy?" she whispered, glad that the word was echoed by Gavin a moment later in a much firmer voice. She wasn't dreaming this time. Andy really was back. Before she could get her thoughts in order enough to ask where he had been, his arms were already around her, pulling her close. She burrowed her nose in his neck and brought her arms around him, too, holding him tightly.

"Where is Rusty?" she asked, still breathless. "Is he okay?"

As nice as it was to have his arms around her, she forced herself to draw back to look at him, her heart swelling at the sight of him despite the fear that was still very much present. He looked tired and scruffy, but otherwise unharmed.

"He is stuffing his face down in the cafeteria, but he is fine and he will come to see you after," Andy said, giving her a lopsided smile. He looked haggard, she noticed, his cheeks fallen and his clothes hanging on his frame.

"What happened, Andy?" she asked him, running her hand down his face, feeling the stubble of four days underneath her fingertips.

"It's a long story," Andy said vaguely. "How about we get you back to bed before we talk? Provenza told me what happened and I don't want you on your feet for too long."

Sharon was about to protest, but then decided that he was probably right. Her knees were shaking and she was feeling exhausted. Even though he looked quite scruffy himself, she became aware of the way her hair was matted and of how much she was in need of a shower.

It was as if Gavin had been reading her thoughts. "Looks like you and Andy can have your showers together." He wriggled his eyebrows unnecessarily.

Sharon let the two men help her back into her room in that agonizingly slow way that she had to walk in nowadays and sighed when she sat back down on the bed, Andy next to her and Gavin in a chair opposite them. She rested her head against Andy's shoulder and smelled chlorine. Suddenly alert, she remembered that there was something she had to tell him before anything else could be said.

"Andy, you said you'd spoken to Provenza. He probably told you that I had reconciled with Jack, that the baby wasn't yours. I want you to know that that is not true, okay?"

Gavin, who hadn't been present during that particular confrontation, lifted both brows in surprise, but Andy just waved it off.

"Don't worry, Sweetheart. I set him straight. I know that I'm Little Peach's father," Andy answered earnestly. Sharon exhaled softly when the baby kicked her hard at the sound of its father's voice. "Is she kicking you again?"

She put her hand over his as he caressed her stomach. This was not the moment to admit that her praised motherly intuition had once again been off and that they were having a boy instead of the girl she had been convinced she was carrying. She needed to know what had happened and she needed to know it now. (And she needed to postpone the merciless teasing she knew she was rightfully in for.)

"What happened, Andy? Where have you been?" she asked him instead, her hand on his chest to feel his beating heart. Her dream had been so real that she had been almost ready to believe that Andy was actually reaching out to her from beyond the grave. Of course it seemed ridiculous now. Like the fever-induced hallucination it had been. And she would never call any son of hers Angelo, that was for sure.

He looked hesitant and cupped her cheek. "Why don't you lie down for this? Telling you everything will take a while."

Sharon wrinkled her nose. "They just changed the sheets and I was drenched in sweat all night. I feel terrible. I need to take a shower before I get back in bed."

Andy's gaze swept over to Gavin and back. "Okay then," he said. "I'll tell you in the shower."

"Hey!" Gavin protested. "What about me? I want to know, too!"

Andy rolled his eyes. "You're definitely not welcome to join."

Gavin pouted. "As if Sharon hadn't told me absolutely everything about how you look naked." Andy's eyes darted towards Sharon, but she pretended not to notice. Taking a shower, with Andy no less, was a wonderful prospect and she couldn't help herself but long for it despite the fact that it meant keeping her trusted old friend waiting for the time being.

Ten minutes and several admonishments from Gavin later, they were in the shower together, holding each other as the water fell down upon them. Andy ran his hand through Sharon's slowly dampening hair and rested his chin on top of her head, wondering how to find the right words not to knock her right off her feet. She was leaning into him quite heavily and he could feel her abdominal muscles tense under his protective hand on the side of her stomach. She was in no condition to hear what he was about to tell her and yet he knew that he could not keep it from her forever.

"Andy." Her voice was heavy with exhaustion but no less commanding than usual. He knew that he could no longer sidestep the issue, so he cleared his throat.

"We were in the pool house up on your roof."

Her head shot up. "What? What were you doing in there? Why didn't anyone find you?"

"The roof was declared a crime scene after they had discovered that someone had meddled with the pipes. They found out when you were at Gavin's. The repair team only came back an hour ago when they discovered us. Before that, nobody could hear us and we didn't have our phones."

"You were trapped in the pool house for four days?" She was looking up at him incredulously. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

He couldn't remember ever having heard her swear before, but he did imagine that she would do it again the moment she was aware of the whole story.

"How on earth did you end up there?" she asked him. It was almost funny to see her completely naked with shampoo in her hair, glaring up at him with vigor.

"Well," Andy said, rolling his eyes to evade hers. "Well, we were in your living room when there was a knock on the door..."

Sharon's glare was instantly softened down to a worried gaze. "Stroh?" she asked breathlessly.

"Well, no," Andy replied. "I went to open the door and it was your ex-husband."

"Jack?" He felt Sharon hold on tighter to his middle. Afraid that she was tiring out too quickly, he began to gently rinse the shampoo out of her hair. He felt the baby kick where his stomach was pressed against hers. Sharon reacted to it with a soft moan. She really was in no state to hear about her ex-husband and his drunken shenanigans.

"He was drunk and he barged in, insisting that our baby was his. I told him to leave and shooed him out the door, but he was angry and, I am afraid, so drunk that he kept hammering against the door and ultimately kicked it down."

He wrapped Sharon in a big towel before he grabbed one for himself. She looked cute with the water dripping from her wet hair and the yellow towel barely providing enough fabric to wrap around her baby bump while she looked completely flabbergasted.

"How did Jack manage to get you both up to the pool house?" she asked him, accepting the smaller towel he handed her for her hair. "Does he have any superpowers I wasn't previously aware of?"

"Well, he walked through the whole condo, touching pretty much everything he could get his hands on. He seemed particularly fond of your hairbrush." Andy rolled his eyes at the memory. "After we'd been chasing him through the condo for about ten minutes he grabbed my car keys and ran out of the door. I should have been glad to see the back of him, but I needed my damn car keys to drive over to Gavin's and talk about that stupid thing with Rusty with you, so I followed him out and so did Rusty."

Sharon shook her head in disbelief, but didn't try to interject.

"Weirdly enough, he went up instead of down, so we ended up on the roof where he stumbled his way into the pool house where he skipped around on the wet tiles like a little kid. I swear I thought he'd fall and break his neck any time. At this point, I have to admit I wouldn't have been too sorry. But he still had my car keys and he was going on and on about how you had only ever loved him and how I was stupid to believe that our baby was mine, so we followed him in to get the goddamn keys and to shut him up and suddenly he pushed past us - cackling like a madman, I must add - and locked the door from the outside."

"Andy, I think I need to sit down," Sharon said feebly, so he put his arm around her waist and guided her out of the bathroom and towards her bed where Gavin had laid out a fresh pair of pajamas. Sharon put them on slowly and didn't protest when he helped her into bed and tucked her in. She was most probably in shock. Even though the bed was technically too narrow to fit two - especially if one was pregnant - he somehow managed to sit next to her to hold her. She buried her nose in his neck again, squeezing his hand.

"Andy, Jack has totally lost his mind, hasn't he? I mean, he did lock you in a pool house on purpose. What if you hadn't been found in time?"

"You know what, Sharon, he was so drunk, I am pretty sure he had no idea what he was doing and he probably doesn't remember any of it. I am sure he is in the interview room with Provenza right now, protesting his innocence."

Sharon groaned. "That moron! Emily's here. She is getting takeout right now, but she is going to be back soon. How am I going to explain this to her?"

Andy had decided on his way over that he needn't bother her with the details. He had given her only the bare bones of what had gone down. No need to mention Jack going after them with a hose, or detailing how they had hung around the pool house for almost four days bored, hungry, but - thank God - with water to drink from said hose. No need to let her know just yet how Jack had confessed to manipulating the pipes because he wanted to "give Andy the cold shower he needed" or how he had started belting out a horrifyingly bad rendition of "My Way" along the way. Jack had acted like a complete maniac and it made Andy wonder what Sharon had had to endure all those years ago when they had still been married and living together.

He wrapped his arm more tightly around Sharon's shoulders. "Rusty and I are fine now, Sweetheart. We are all safe. Now you have to get better, too, okay?"

"Okay," Sharon whispered against his neck, her arm coming possessively around his chest. "Just make sure this is kept quiet, okay? I don't want the entire LAPD to know what kind of scumbag I married."

Another swearword. Andy was intrigued.

"Hey, how about I ask Rusty to bring us something eat? I haven't eaten in days and I am sure you and our little baby girl could use some nutrition, too."

He furrowed his brow when she lifted her head and gave him a rueful smile. "Well, about that..."