Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Sibling Snap Shot
"Why can't I go with momma?"
Glen is looking up with wide eyes and a puckered lip, daring Vick to tell him why he's being separated from his mom and dad. Vick wishes he could let his nephew go with his parents; it's stressful all around for Glen to be stuck on the outside with his uncle.
Vick isn't sure what he's supposed to tell Glen about what is going on in the surgery suite.
'Sorry, bud, your mother is about to get gutted like a fish so they can rip your new sibling out',seemed like something that would earn him, at the very least, a hard slap on the head from Gale. He doesn't even want to think about what Madge would do to him for exposing her precious baby's mind to such a graphic thought.
If Vick didn't live in the dinky little apartments across from the hospital, the ones that had cheap rent for the residents at the hospital, he would still have beaten his mother and siblings to the hospital. Despite the fact that the C-section is scheduled, they've known the date of their newest family's entrance into the world for months, Vick had worked triage the night before. It had been his way of ensuring that Madge's surgical suite was set up properly. His sleep deprived body is certainly making him pay for it now.
Vick wishes he could be back there helping at least prep Madge for surgery. What good is being a resident with the ob/gyn team if he can't even use his lowly status to sneak into his best friend and sister-in-law's delivery?
Wait…that sounded wrong…
Looking around for something shiny to hopefully distract Glen with, Vick spots a vending machine and raises his hand to try and send his nephew's attention to an overly processed and sugary treat.
Glen isn't having it though. He crosses his arms and wrinkles his nose. "I wanna go with momma and daddy."
Vick sighs. "I'm sorry, Glen. You can't go back there."
"Why not?" Glen flops over on Vick's legs and groans dramatically. "I wanna see the baby."
"You'll see her soon," Vick reassures him, hoping he's soothing Glen's anxiety. "Ga-Your dad will come out those doors right there and he'll have the baby with him. That's what happened when you were born."
"And then we'll see which one of is wins that double chocolate chip cookie for guessing if it's baby 'Miles' or baby 'Savanna'," Rory's voice booms across the room.
Finally.
"Uncle Wory!" Glen runs at Rory, who scoops him up and tosses him over his shoulder.
"Don't rough house in the waiting room, boys," Vick hears his mother tell them as she step through the door, shaking water off her hair as she does.
A glum looking Posy follows shortly after, her hair flat and soggy.
"Rode the motorcycle, huh?" Vick asks, not even bothering to hide his smirk at Posy's annoyance.
"I don't know why mom likes riding the stupid thing with Rory," Posy grumbles, trying to untangle her hair with her fingers.
"You're just pissed you had to ride in the sidecar," Rory snickers.
Their mother gives him a sharp look as she takes Glen from him and mouths the words 'language'.
Vick is pretty sure Glen has heard far more colorful language from Gale, Madge has complained about it on more than one occasion. He decides to keep that tidbit to himself though. No reason to upset his mother and release Gale's fury on being 'tattled' on down on his head.
Posy finally gets her hair righted, shoots Rory a dark look, then smiles at Glen. "And how is my favorite baby nephew?"
"I'm not a-a baby, Tia Posy," Glen huffs. "And I'm you only nephew."
Posy grumbles something about Katy-Jo Lewes teaching Glen 'tongues' during her visits. She hates being called 'tia' and doesn't understand why Madge's friend insists on being called by the title despite having had the name explained to her several times.
Despite her increasingly sour mood, Posy smiles when Glen reaches over and kisses her cheek.
"You took forever to get here," Vick tells his mother as she settles down with Glen on her lap.
She doesn't look up, just begins fussing with Glen's wild hair as she talks. "You can blame your sister for that. Thinks she's going to run into one of your buddies up here and wouldn't stop fussing with her hair."
His mother smirks at Posy, seated across from them, glaring irritably.
"I did not," she crosses her arms and slouches a little further in the cracked plastic seat.
Rory grins and flops over on her. "Of course you didn't, baby sister."
He then runs his hand through her hair, turning it into a disheveled mess. Posy lets out a low shriek, stands up and glares at Rory before storming off, to find a bathroom to straighten out her hair no doubt.
"You have a death wish, don't you Rory?" Vick asks as he watches his sister storming down the hall.
"I'm preserving her innocence. Your girl-part baby doctor friends are cads," Rory answers.
Vick rolls his eyes. Cads? Who bought Rory a thesaurus?
"What's 'reserving her in-o-scents' mean?" Glen asks, looking between his all knowing grandmother and his sometimes knowing uncles.
Vick shrinks down in his seat to avoid his mother's narrowed glare. Rory follows suit, pulling his cap down over his eyes.
"Nothing, pumpkin. Your uncles are being silly," their mother tells Glen as she pulls him back on her lap and strokes his now much less messy hair.
Vick thanks his lucky stars that Glen is a sharp kid, a trait he got, Vick is certain, from his mother. Glen arches his eyebrows up as he looks over at Vick from his seat on his Grammy, letting his uncle know that while he's dropping the subject settle for now, he'll bring it up again later, out of Grammy's earshot and he'll demand answers.
Hopefully he corners Rory first. He's the idiot that brought it up in the first place, so he should be the one to have to deal with the explanation, or fake-splanation as they'd started calling them. Poor Glen is going to have trust issues when he's older, almost entirely owing to his creative uncles.
"How much longer?" Rory asks. He's tossed his legs over the little rail into Posy's unoccupied seat and reclining sloppily against the wall.
A little annoyed, Rory hasn't been sitting in the ancient waiting room for the last hour with the increasingly agitated Glen, Vick shrugs. The section should be over in a few minutes, if it isn't already, but Rory needs a little anticipation in his life.
"Oh, come on," Rory sits up. "You know. You're just not telling me to be an as-"
"Rory," their mother cuts him off and glances down at Glen who has once again sensed an impending flub and poised himself to catch it.
"-suageous…jerk."
The thesaurus strikes again. Unfortunately, it hadn't told Rory what he was about to say made absolutely no sense. Maybe, Vick thinks, for his next birthday Rory needs to ask for a dictionary.
Just as Vick is about to tell Rory that, one of his friends, a curly haired girl named Tullia, ghost by the door that leads back to the operating room. She stops for a second, in front of the little window in the door, and gives Vick a thumbs up before walking on.
Vick lets out a long breath and smiles at his mother. "I think the family just got a little bigger."
Glen sits up straight, stops struggling to escape his grandmother's firm hold. His eyes widen in anticipation. "The baby's here. Where is she?"
"Or he," Rory adds, earning him a sharp look from Glen.
"No she," Glen corrects him confidently.
For the next ten minutes, Glen bobs in front of the swinging doors that lead back to where his parents and new sibling are just out of his grasp. Vick tries to reassure him that is takes a few minutes to get the baby ready, and Madge, so Glen should sit and wait patiently.
"I wait-ti-ted forever," Glen grumbles, tossing his hands up in the air in frustration.
Just as Vick is about to suggest Rory take his one and only nephew down to the cafeteria to get something for lunch, a task that requires more patience than Vick's sleep deprived mind can muster at the moment, the dull gray doors swing open and Gale steps out.
He's in a pair of stiff paper scrubs, special sets specifically kept on hand for fathers during c-sections. They've put a surgical cap on him, a fluffy, airy thing, and Vick can see Gale's wild hair sticking up under the puffy top.
Wrapped up tight, not making so much as a cooing noise, is the newest family member.
"Finally," Glen mutters before running up to his dad. "Lemme see!"
Gale chuckles and drops down, pulls the blankets down a little from around the baby's head so Glen can better see her.
"Say hello, Savanna," Gale tells her.
The baby just yawns and closes her eyes. Glen smiles and reaches out, gently smoothes the mess of dark hair on the baby's head.
"I knew you was a girl."
A hand grabs Vick and he startles slightly before he realizes it's his mother. The anticipation is too much for her and she's started silently crying.
In the blink of an eye she's over at her oldest son's side, fussing over his paper garb and fawning over the baby.
"Oh, Gale, she's just perfect."
"So she takes after her mother," Rory snickers.
Vick snorts and tries to cover it with a very obvious cough.
"No she looks like Gale," Posy, who'd finally returned from the bathroom, huffs, clearly missing her brothers' jab. "Look at her hair."
She runs her hand over her niece's tiny head, already covered in thick dark hair.
Rory rolls his eyes, "She's a baby, Posy. She looks like a lumpy root."
Vick thinks Rory's very lucky Madge isn't around. If she heard him call her baby a lumpy anything she would probably tear his face off, and honestly, after the day she's had, Gale would probably help her do it.
Actually, Vick thinks he might tell her when they're finally allowed to see her.
"She doesn't look like a root, Rory," their mother shoots him a look. "She looks like you all when you were babies."
Rory breathes out, says something that sounds like 'need your head checked' before scooting out of his mother's swinging range.
Vick doubts his mother's memory, just a little, too. He definitely thinks Rory has it right in thinking Madge's genetic contribution is the more obvious of the two. Other than the hair. Though as one of the older doctors had pointed out, after delivering a baby to a couple and having the child look absolutely like neither of them, despite their insistence the he did, 'people see what they want'.
Glen, for the first time in his short life, ignores the bickering. He's solely absorbed in his new sister.
"Can I hold her? Can I feed her? When can we take her home? Is momma coming out in a min-"
Gale doesn't miss a beat, "No. No. In a few days, and they're taking your mom to her room just as soon as I get back in there with the baby."
He gives them the room number as he turns to leave, telling Glen to be good for Grammy.
"When we get in the room you can help your mom hold her, okay?"
The promise of seeing his mother and getting to hold his much anticipated baby sister is enough to contain all of Glen's energy. He grabs his Grammy's hand and begins tugging her toward the hall.
"We gotta go. We hafta find the room," he tells her. When she isn't fast enough on her feet, Glen circles her and starts pushing her from behind. "Come on, Grammy!"
"Why don't we have your Uncle Vick lead the way? He should know his way around this place," Vick hears his mother tell Glen.
Vick starts to tell her he gets lost on a daily basis, and that at the moment the only useful thing he knows is where the good coffee pot is. Down the hall, badge in, and behind the mounting stack of discarded plastic ware. He keeps that to himself, though, as he yawns and takes the lead.
After taking the wrong elevator and ending up on the general surgical floor, then taking a left turn at the outpatient center instead of a right, Vick finally steers the irritable family to the right floor.
"How do you get lost in a place you're in literally every day?" Rory asks, his expression completely baffled.
Vick glares. "I take the back way. You know? The staff only elevator."
He gets lost going that way too, but he doesn't tell his brother that. It isn't Vick's fault the hospital is a patchwork that feels like it's constantly shifting. Every day things seem to be in different places. It's like the administration wants to keep them on their feet.
Glen squeals and runs into the room, flying past Gale and landing on the bed next to Madge. "Momma!"
He immediately starts bombarding her with questions. He asks about the surgery, if he can hold the baby now, when will they be getting lunch, can he stay with them for the night, and how big can the cookie be that Uncle Rory owes him for guessing that the baby was going to be a girl?
Far from looking overwhelmed, which is how Vick feels when Glen starts firing off his rapid fire questions at him, Madge just smiles and smoothes her son's hair down in the back.
"Sit right here and you can hold her with me," she tells him. Her eyes are heavy, doughy from the medication and drop in adrenaline, but she still glows, radiates happiness and warmth.
Gale gently carries the baby to her, places her in Madge's waiting arms before settling himself at Glen's other side to supervise.
Almost reverently, Glen watches Madge adjust the blankets before she smiles at him.
"You have to be very careful, okay? Support her head," she tells him as she carefully puts the baby in Glen's waiting arms.
Gale does most of the holding, wrapping his arms around his son to provide almost all of the support. Glen is really just there for the baby to sit on, but he's clearly thrilled just the same.
"That child has no idea what he's getting into," Rory chuckles from somewhere over Vick's shoulder.
"Oh, be quiet," Posy grumbles.
"Really," Rory suddenly throws one arm around Vick's neck and the other over Posy's shoulder. "Just ask Vicki. Once the younger sibling comes, it's all downhill."
Posy scoffs and Vick rolls his eyes.
"He should ask his dad," Vick says as he tries to free himself from Rory's clutches. "He had three to put up with."
"I don't count," Rory says dismissively, waving his hand on Posy's shoulder. "I was the perfect younger sibling."
The perfectly annoying younger sibling, Vick thinks.
"Gale's threatened you more than Vick and I combined," Posy points out.
Rory waves his hand again. "He's always been threatened by charismatic personality. Jealousy is an ugly thing."
"You don't even know what 'charismatic' means," Vick grumbles. Rory probably thinks it has something to do with his hair.
"Guess Gale isn't the only jealous one," Rory snickers as he lets Vick and Posy go.
Posy shakes her head and walks over to their mother, getting in line to hold the baby if Glen ever relinquishes her. Rory knocks Vick in the side with his elbow to get his attention.
"Wanna help me pick out a cookie for the munchkin? I'll even throw in a cup of coffee for your baggy eyed self."
"The coffee is free, you idiot," Vick tells him.
"And worth every penny, I'm sure," Rory comments without batting an eye.
As they make their quiet exit, Vick looks back at the happy family on the bed, still marveling over the baby, and smiles.
Glen looks up for a half a second, deep in thought, then turns to Gale. "Dad, do we have to 'reserve 'Vanna's in-o-scents'? Like Uncle Rory and Vick do with Tia Posy."
Gale frowns. "Do we what?"
Before Glen even starts to explain, Vick and Rory are out the door. They have a cookie to find after all.