October 1984

The cab pulled up outside of the hospital as another contraction hit. The driver got out, rushing around to the back passenger side door. He ushered her out of the vehicle as soon as she was no longer doubled over in pain, immediately going to inspect the back seat as though he expected to find it covered in placenta or something.

Lorelai reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. "How much do I owe you?" she asked, her free hand nervously caressing her stomach.

He glanced back at the meter inside the cab, "Four and quarter."

She peeled off a five-dollar bill and handed it to him. The cabbie stood there awkwardly glancing back and forth from Lorelai to the doors of the hospital. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, my boyfriend is on the way," she lied. In truth, she hadn't even thought about calling Christopher. When the first contraction had hit in the middle of a rerun of Quincy, M.E. she tried to ignore it. It wasn't a contraction; it was probably just indigestion from the PB&J she was eating. But when another one hit twenty minutes later, just as Quincy was getting reamed out about missing his own wedding shower, she couldn't ignore the truth any longer. She waddled downstairs, pulling the Yellow Pages out and looking up the name of a local cab company. She dialed the number and was told the taxi would be there in ten minutes. Then she grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, quickly scribbling a note…

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm in labor. See you later,

Lorelai.

She gathered up her coat, shoving her Walkman inside, she went to grab some cash out of the emergency stash her father kept hidden in his office, and then, she waited. Christopher had never even crossed her mind. Maybe she should have called him. But then he would be there. He'd be there holding her hand and telling her how great she was doing and how strong and brave she was. Only she wasn't. She wasn't strong or brave. She was scared as hell.

She was better off doing this alone. He could come see the baby after. She wouldn't stop him from being in the baby's life. But her life…that was a different story. He didn't know anything about her life now. He was still in school, going about his days like everything was normal. Sure, he'd get the occasional dirty looks and lewd comments. But he'd also get high-fives and congratulatory smirks. She was the one who'd had to drop out. She was the one who was labeled a slut, and a whore, by the other students, and a Jezebel by their parents. She was the one whose whole body was changing right after she'd just gotten used to all the uncomfortable changes of puberty. She was the one who was going to have to give up her dreams of Harvard and of seeing the world. He couldn't understand what that was like…that it wasn't bravery, it was necessity. He still had the option of a wide-open future. She had a baby to raise…or at least she was about to.

The cabbie gave one more hesitant look towards the hospital before taking the money, bolting back to the driver's seat, and speeding away.

Lorelai amble into the waiting room, looking around at the buzzing atmosphere. No one even noticed she was there. She took a deep breath and headed towards the desk labeled registration.

"May I help you?" a kind looking nurse asked.

"Yeah I'm…I'm here to have a baby." The nurse pushed herself up from her seat just enough to see over the desk, taking in the size of Lorelai's stomach.

"Oh my. Are you okay? Did your water break yet? How are the contractions?"

"I'm okay," Lorelai said. "They just started about an hour ago. They're not too bad yet."

"Okay," the nurse nodded. "Well, take these papers and go have a seat and fill them out." She handed over a clipboard with an attached pen and nodded her head towards the seats in the middle of the room. Lorelai took the intake forms, walking around to the seats facing away from the registration window, took off her coat, and sat.

Name…The top of the sheet read. Good, start with an easy one. Birthday. She knew that too. Sex. Well, that was what had gotten her into this predicament.

She filled out the first page with ease. But the second page was much less simple. Insurance forms. She knew the name of her Dad's insurance firm, so she could at least fill that in. But ID numbers and addresses…those were beyond her. She got through the medical history just as a new nurse approached her.

"Are you done?"

"Yes." She was as done as she was going to be. She'd had to leave some blanks but more time wasn't going to suddenly make the answers to those questions materialize in her brain. She handed the clipboard over.

"Okay, is anyone with you, Hon?" The nurse asked.

"No." How much of a loser was she? Sixteen, in an ER waiting room in labor, and all alone.

To the woman's credit, she just reached out a comforting hand and said "Well, someone will be up to get you in just a second." The woman was pretty old, she'd probably seen everything before—even pregnant teenagers all by themselves.

"Thanks." Lorelai looked around nervously for a minute before reaching for her Walkman. She slipped the headphones on and pressed play. 99 Luft Balloons started playing, drowning out the noise of the busy waiting room until she was, all alone in a room full of people.

"Okay, this is a big pain and I'd really like it to go away, please." Lorelai had been in labor for hours now and rather than going away, the pain was getting worse. So much worse, in fact, that she was on her way to the delivery room.

"Just breathe deep, honey," The nurse said in that voice that was supposed to be calming but actually made Lorelai want to stab somebody's eyes out. Why didn't she try to breath away the pain of her body trying to expel and seven-pound parasite through a ten-centimeter hole.

"Breathing doesn't help, can I hit you instead?" She panted through the pain. Maybe if Lorelai punched a ten-centimeter hole into the woman, she would know what it felt like.

"What?"

"Or pinch you really hard? 'Cause that might make me feel better."

"No, you cannot pinch me." She knew that would be the answer, of course. Especially since she'd already gotten in trouble for throwing ice chips at another nurse who had asked her to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten—she'd just been trying to answer the woman's question…ten chips for a level ten pain.

"Can I bite you or pull your hair or use the Epilady on you? 'Cause I really need to do something."

"Lorelai Gilmore!" Oh great, as if she wasn't in enough pain.

"Wheel this a little faster, please," she begged the nurse.

"Lorelai, you do not do this," Emily Gilmore's shrill voice was getting closer. "You do not just leave a person a note."

"Okay, see the timing here?" She grabbed at her stomach, trying to shift herself into a less painful position as another contraction bared down on her. But there was no escaping the pain. Or her mother who had caught up with the gurney and was clopping away alongside it in her designer heels, waving a piece of stationary.

"Dear Mom and Dad, I'm in labor. See you later, Lorelai," she read dramatically from the paper.

"Ow." Lorelai squeaked

"Emily, please, I feel ridiculous," her father's voice joined them from somewhere behind her.

"You're having a baby. Do you know that, Lorelai?" She may have gotten knocked up at fifteen and dropped out of school, but she wasn't stupid. Of course she knew she was having a baby.

"Well, that explains the stomachache."

"You do not leave your house when you are having a baby without telling your mother. You say, 'Excuse me, Mom. I'm having a baby, give me a ride to the damn hospital!'" They weren't even home. What did they expect? Her to call up the country club and ask some random worker to pass along the message? To ask the cab driver to make a pit stop on the way?

"Emily, please, I wore the wrong shoes for this."

"Of all the things in the world I had a right to do, driving my daughter to the hospital to give birth, especially since she's sixteen years old and doesn't have her driver's license yet, is definitely one of them." God, if they didn't wheel this gurney a little faster, she was…well, she didn't know what she was going to do because there was a baby actively making its way out of her hoo-ha and she was numb from the waist down. Couldn't a girl even active labor in peace without a lecture about what a disappointment she was?

The gurney stopped. "Ma'am, I need to wait out here, please." God bless the woman. Lorelai almost felt sorry for wanting to bite her earlier.

"Why?"

"Because we're going into the delivery room." Lorelai never thought she would be so happy to see the inside of a delivery room. It was a room where the most painful natural phenomenon known to mankind occurred and still, she preferred it over staying in this hallway one more second.

"I want to go in," Emily demanded.

"No, Mom, please," Lorelai begged. All she wanted was to be left alone. To be left alone to give birth to her daughter. She didn't need her mother's harping. Or her father's complete inability to show a human emotion. She didn't need Christopher's kind but meek reassurances…did she? N0! This was no time for second guessing herself. She'd call him after it was over. She could do this alone. She wanted to do it alone. That's how her life was going to be from now on…her and her baby—alone. She might as well get used to it now.

"Yes, Emily, please." Richard agreed with her, patting her mother on the shoulders.

"Fine," Emily huffed we'll be right here when you're done." She gestured to the chairs lining the hall right outside the delivery room.

"Super," Lorelai rolled her eyes as they pushed her through the swinging doors of the delivery room…alone.

"And do not think we're finished discussing this, young lady, because we are not!" Yep…alone was definitely the way to go.

December 2005

He jabbed his finger into the button again, bouncing on his toes with impatience. How slow could this thing go? Was it even moving at all? Maybe the elevator was stuck. Maybe he was going to need to press the big, red button and call for help…or stunt double his way out of the escape hatch at the top of the elevator like in the movies.

Just as he was contemplating his death-defying stunt, the elevator dinged and the door slid open. He shoved past the orderly pushing a grandma on a gurney, and headed for the stairs. He was still two floors away from the maternity ward, but he couldn't stand still on that elevator a second longer without exploding. It had already taken all his restraint to not test the speed limits of his Porsche 911 going down I-84. If he crashed it, he couldn't sell it and he was going to need that money for first and last month's rent and a security deposit on an apartment.

From the moment he'd plucked his cellphone out of the bin at the front of the classroom on his way out of his last final and seen the blinking envelope on the screen, he'd been running on pure adrenaline. He still couldn't believe she hadn't paged him. The message was 47 minutes old. 47 extra minutes he could have spent getting here. What if he was too late? What if he missed it? He couldn't miss it. He needed to be there to greet his son. He needed to be there with Rory. At least she wasn't alone; Lorelai had left the message and it sounded like they'd come to some sort of truce. So, there was that. But still, that didn't change the fact that he had lost 47 minutes filling in a bluebook with a case analysis of the Vodafone acquisition of Mannesmann. 47 minutes that could have been the difference between seeing the birth of his son and missing it.

He skidded to a stop in front of the nurse's station. "Rory Gilmore," he panted. The nurse looked up at him with a bored expression, before turning her attention to the computer in front of her. She lazily pecked Rory's name into the computer. God, hadn't the woman ever heard of Mavis Beacon? Or had she etched her nursing exam answers onto a papyrus scroll?

"Room 742," she finally announced.

Logan was gone, once again sprinting down the hall in the direction of Rory's room. He thrust open the door to room 742. He wasn't exactly sure what he expected to see. Rory screaming out in agony while the doctor told her to push, maybe? Or a crying baby boy? He certainly didn't expect to see Rory sitting up, sipping apple juice through a straw and casually arguing with Lorelai over the correct price of the kitchen dinette set Bob Barker was showing off.

Rory looked over and the corners of her lips immediately pulled up into a beaming smile. "You're here!" she greeted brightly.

"I made it?" he asked for confirmation, though it was obvious from the swell of her stomach he had. He just hadn't expected labor to look this…relaxed.

"Take a seat, Dad," Lorelai assured him. "Put your feet up, we're gonna be here for a while."

"Is everything okay?"

"Everything is dandy, Daddy. Heh," Lorelai chuckled. "Dandy, Daddy."

He ignored Lorelai, looking to Rory to glean some grasp of what was going on. Rory must have noticed the frantic stare and taken pity on him.

"I'm still stuck at 3 centimeters dilated and I haven't had a contraction in over half an hour. They'd send me home if it weren't for the pre-eclampsia and the fact that my water broke."

"And this is normal?" He'd tried to read as much of What to Expect When You're Expecting as he could, but it was 650 pages and between school, packing, job hunting, and traveling back and forth to Boston, he'd barely made it to the second trimester, let alone to the labor and delivery chapters.

"They say early labor can last 8-12 hours in most women. Sometimes even days, especially for a first pregnancy."

"Days?!" that did not sound pleasant.

"I mean, it's not so bad…except the no solid food rule. That part's kind of a bummer."

"A bummer?" Lorelai repeated incredulously. "You're a Gilmore and you've been told not to eat. Possibly for days. That's not a bummer, it's some sort of enhanced interrogation technique. I bet Bush was behind it. You do one little Google search for uranium and suddenly everyone is a terrorist."

"Umm…" Logan wasn't really sure what to say to that. Under different circumstances he was sure he'd take the joke and run with it. But this wasn't different circumstances and right now he was too busy just trying to get his bearings to be able to participate in that level of banter. "What can you have? Jell-o is a clear liquid, right?" he asked, trying to find something he could do to help a situation which oddly enough to him, did not seem to need help. "I could go get you some Jell-o."

"Sit," Rory said, motioning to a chair on the side of the bed opposite Lorelai. He looked back and forth from mother to daughter. They looked completely at ease. Not like at the hospital a few weeks ago when they'd both just been so relieved to see each other that they'd ignored all the anger and disappointment and frustration and tried to pretend everything was normal. And not like that dinner at Richard and Emily's when he'd first met Lorelai and she'd spent the whole evening shooting him daggers while Rory sat uncomfortably, looking back and forth between them like she was waiting for the one-sided skirmish to turn into a full-on war. No, this was the way he'd always imagined their relationship to be when she talked about it back at Yale; before him, before Samuel, before Lorelai's ultimatum and Rory's running away. Lorelai even smiled at him. And not a forced smile like she was only tolerating his presence. It was almost like she actually wanted him there.

Not that he cared what Lorelai thought about him. But he knew he was a major point of contention between mother and daughter. If Lorelai was accepting him then maybe they had made up for real. He wanted that for her, even if he was still wary of it. Could families really solve all their problems just like that? Could there be hope for parents to come around and admit they didn't always know what's best? Could forgiving them for trying to live vicariously through you be that simple? He wanted to believe that it was. He wanted to believe that blood really was thicker than all the rain that begged to wash it away. Logan tentatively took a seat.

"How did your final go?" Rory asked.

"Fine." It was surreal; sitting here talking about his final like everything was normal. Even if things with Rory and Lorelai were fixed, nothing about this was normal. Rory was in labor. He was about to become a father. His own family had disowned him. Everything was different now. He had to take responsibility for not only his own life, but Rory and Samuel's too. Up until this point in his life, he'd never been responsible for so much as a goldfish. How was Rory so calm? They didn't even have a place to live. Logan had barely talked to the start-up guys since he'd left Kyle's Mom's garage to rush to the hospital two and a half weeks ago. There had been a few emails, and one not-to-happy phone call with Mark. At this point he wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a job lined up anymore. And there were all the little things….bottles and diapers and car seats. Did they even have a car seat to get Samuel home with?

Home. It seemed like such a strange concept all of a sudden. Now that he had none. Now that he'd emptied out his apartment. Now that he wasn't welcome at any of the surfeit of Huntzberger owned residences. He knew he'd find them someplace to live…small probably, smaller than he'd ever imagined he'd live in. It would be a different kind of home than what he was familiar with…a better kind, he hoped (though the nagging voice in his head reminding him of all the things he might never be able to afford for his son said otherwise). Most of all, he knew that home was wherever Rory and Samuel were. But until he found them that tiny, affordable place all their own, Rory and Samuel's home was at Christopher's. And while Logan didn't want to think of leaving their side, he could hardly just invite himself to live there too. The man had been an ally, but he wasn't a saint. Was he really going to let his daughter's baby daddy share a bed with her without rings on their fingers while her 3-year-old half-sister slept down the hall?

And speaking of… He looked around, "Where's Christopher?"

"He's taking Gigi to his mother's. He'll be here soon."

"Oh, oh…you missed it," Rory suddenly broke in, apparently remembering something she wanted to tell him. "Mom told me the funniest story…" Her smile was wide as she retold an anecdote about some guy named Kirk from Stars Hollow who had apparently set up a kiddie pool and Slip 'N Slide in the town square over the summer, called it a water park, and tried to charge admission. She bowled over in laughter as she finished, barely able to get out the ending which involved the Town Selectman, a man named Taylor, sliding slap-stick style down the Slip 'N Slide on his penny loafers, stumbling through a maze of hoses set up as water fountains, and then falling headfirst into a mud puddle with his butt in the air. He hadn't seen her this happy since before…before she'd gotten pregnant and dropped out of Yale and run away from home. Back when her biggest concerns were which classes to take, and what to wear to the first day of her internship. He'd missed seeing this side of her. He'd missed that smile. The one that went all the way to her eyes without a trace of sadness. He was happy for her, he was. That's why he put on his best smile and laughed right along with her despite every concern coursing through his body. As long as she was happy, he'd keep his concerns to himself.

He simultaneously felt like crawling out of his skin and burrowing into himself. He was hungry but nauseous. Anxious, but beyond the point of caring—it was too overwhelming to even try. He'd been sitting there for hours…six hours to be exact. And Rory had barely managed to dilate from three centimeters to four. Her contractions were a little more regular and a little stronger but they were still fifteen to twenty minutes apart.

Her happy, serene mood from when he'd first arrived had since been punctuated by freakouts over everything from the fact that the hospital only had lemon Jell-O, to how Samuel would take to breast feeding, to whether or not he would wind up with her athletic abilities and get bullied for throwing like a girl when he was older. Logan had to admit, it made him feel a little better to know he wasn't the only one on the cusp of a nervous breakdown. But between her fits of worry and the stronger contractions, she would settle down and chat with her dad about whether he'd gotten the dinosaur themed bedding for the crib, or the space themed one (he'd gotten both) and she'd mock old reruns of The Nanny with her mother.

And through it all he tried to keep the smile on his face. He tried to engage. He tried to be supportive. Because that was his job. His one and only job at the moment…to be supportive. To keep her happy. He'd spent most of his life destined for a job he didn't want. But this job, this was the one he chose for himself. And besides, she was literally giving birth to a human being that she'd grown inside of her. The least he could do was smile and tell her how amazing she was and how great she was doing and how he couldn't wait to start his life with her and their son. And he couldn't; he really and truly couldn't. Maybe that was the problem, though…all of the waiting. Logan was a man of action. He didn't sit around waiting for his life to start; he acted. Or maybe it was the fact that, while Rory and Lorelai seemed to have patched things up, he still couldn't quite find it in himself to trust her. All this smiling and joking around and mother-daughter solidarity…it seemed too good to be true. How could they have possibly dealt with all their issues in less than a day? But Rory needed her mother. So, he smiled and joked along with them. But it was exhausting…not as exhausting as being in labor…he reminded himself.

"I'm gonna go get a soda from the vending machine." He had to get out of there…just for a minute. He felt terrible feeling that way but it was true. "Anybody want anything?" He looked at Rory. "Ace? Gingerale? Juice? Ice chips…you haven't pelted anyone in a while."

"Hey!" Christopher protested, looking up from his Rolling Stone magazine. "That someone she was pelting was me."

"Well, you were the one who suggested I bring my son into the world to the music stylings of System of a Down."

"It was just a suggestion," Christopher defended.

"A terrible one at that," Lorelai replied.

"See, this is what I mean. No one here appreciates good music. Someone's got to teach the kid."

"They really don't…"

"Logan's with me on this…aren't you?" Christopher turned to his one last chance for support.

"Sorry," Logan shrugged. "I'm going to have to side with them on this. The first thing my son hears as he enters this world is not going to be Chop Suey! Lorelai?" he turned his attention back to the question at hand. "You want anything to drink?"

"I'm good, I bribed one of the male nurses into bringing me a coffee from the breakroom," Lorelai reminded him, brandishing her generic cardboard cup.

"Christopher?"

"I'm good."

Logan headed out into the hall. He hated leaving Rory's side, even for a few minutes, but also, being out of that room, it finally felt like he could breathe again. Once he got a few doors down, he leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths. He could do this. Who cared if he had no family, nowhere to live, and almost no liquid cash. Who cared if he hadn't had so much as a second to prepare for fatherhood. Who cared if nothing was ready for Samuel's arrival. He was ready. He was ready for anything. That was the motto he lived by…in omnia paratus. He could do this. Even if it meant many more hours sitting awkwardly in a room with Rory's mother who hated him. Even if it meant a lifetime of it.

"Hey, Logan." Speaking of….he opened his eyes at the sound of his name, turning his head to see Lorelai heading down the hall towards him.

"Oh, hey, did you change your mind? Did you want me to get you something? Or Rory?"

"Actually…" Lorelai looked sheepish as she fumbled with her hands. It was a look Logan wasn't at all used to from her. "Can we, uh…talk for a minute." She gestured to the nearby seats of the maternity waiting room.

Logan looked from the seats to her, back to the seats again.

"Please," Lorelai added at his look of hesitation.

"Sure….I guess." Might as well get it over with; whatever it was had to be better than the awkwardness in the room over the last six hours.

They crossed the hall to the waiting room and took a seat. "I need to apologize." She was looking at her lap, her fingers drumming nervously against her thighs.

"Oh, uh…" He supposed some part of him had considered the possibility that she had come in peace, but he wasn't sure he really believed it until he actually heard the words coming from her mouth.

"Look, I'm not gonna lie and say I'm not still pissed you lied to me about knowing where she was. I'm not sure I'll ever completely forgive you for that if I'm being honest."

"I…"

Lorelai held up a hand to stop his protestations before they could even begin. "I know that you thought you were doing what was best for her. We can disagree on if it was or wasn't. But everything else you've done for her…you've more than proven you love her."

"Of course I do."

"I'm sorry for doubting that…for doubting you. It's just…" Lorelai shrugged, letting out a deep breath of air. "I had Rory when I was just a kid myself. And I did it alone. It's been the two of us against the world for most of my life. I don't know how to be without her. When I got pregnant, I was an unhappy kid looking at a future I hated and Rory saved me."

"I know the feeling." They weren't that different, he and Lorelai.

"Yeah, I guess you do. It's just that, while she may have saved me, raising her was also the hardest thing I ever had to do. And I never wanted that for her. I never wanted her to need saving. And I definitely never wanted it to be hard for her."

"Of course you didn't." All he wanted for Samuel was to grow up feeling safe and loved. If he could give him that, it would be worth all the things he couldn't give him now that he'd quite HPG. He just wanted to protect him. The only thing was, he had no idea how to even start when there were so many threats lurking just beneath the muddy surface of this seemingly bottomless lake they'd gotten themselves into ….his parents, a steady income, Dean…

"Anyway, I guess I let my pride get in the way. I wasn't prepared to lose her like I did and I didn't want to admit that I'd failed her so monumentally. I think a part of me still needed to prove to myself that I could do it on my own; that I didn't need anyone else. And that meant that I needed to believe that she didn't need anyone else. Because if she did, it felt like I was still failing her."

"You didn't fail her."

"I haven't exactly been a rousing success as a mother lately."

"You made mistakes. No one is perfect. But you're here, and you're still trying. It's a lot more than most parents can say." It was definitely more than his own parents could.

Lorelai finally looked up at him. "Some parents just don't know how to appreciate what they've got." On the other hand, maybe it could be as awkward as inside the room. "Okay," Lorelai said after a long, uncomfortable pause, "Well, then…" She slapped her hands on her knees and started to stand

"Can I ask you a question?" Her butt was half-way off the seat and she paused for a moment, mid-rise, before sitting back down again.

"Shoot."

"How did you do it?"

"Which part?"

Logan shrugged, not really sure how to even begin to narrow it down. "All of it. Walking away from your family. From the money. Starting over from scratch. Being responsible for a whole life. Being an involved parent while working your ass off to provide for her?"

Lorelai inhaled deeply as though just remembering the effort it took was a monumental feat.

"I don't know if I should answer that."

"Why not?"

"Because the answer isn't something you should be looking to emulate."

"What does that mean?"

"I lived my life desperate to prove myself. To prove that I could do it without the money, without family, without help. Desperate to prove that I could be a better parent than my parents ever were. Desperate to prove that I didn't need anyone or anything. And Rory was that proof. I told you before that she saved me but…" she shook her head, her lips pursed together in regret. "But that was never her job. I should never have put that kind of pressure on her. Don't do what I did, Logan. Don't look to Rory and Samuel to save you from your past. You don't have to do it all alone, like I did. You have help. You may not have your parents, but you have Rory. You have Christopher. Hell…" she cleared her throat uncomfortably. "You even, uh…you even have me. But even with all the help in the world, you need to be the one to save yourself. No one else deserves that burden."

He sat, silently trying to take in her words. The swirl of thoughts in his head was barely comprehensible; it was all so overwhelming. It would take a while to make sense of everything, but already he knew she was right…about all of it. He just hoped he'd be able to heed her advice.

"I um…" he pointed over his shoulder. "I'm gonna go get that soda."

Lorelai nodded standing up to head back to Rory's room. "I'll meet you back there."

Twenty-three hours. That's how long he'd been here. Rory had been in labor for over a day now. Her happy, relaxed demeanor from when he'd first arrived at the hospital had deteriorated rapidly during that time. Not that Logan could blame her. None of this situation seemed pleasant. He was beyond exhausted himself and he wasn't the one who's body was trying to expel another human being.

She gripped down on his hand like she was trying to crush the carbon in his fingers into a diamond. Maybe she'd be successful and they could sell his diamond hand to pay for college.

He had thought the epidural would help, but it clearly hadn't eliminated all the pain and there was still plenty of pressure. It also hadn't helped much with her mood. He supposed that no amount of lidocaine directly into one's spinal cord could alleviate the hunger, exhaustion, and emotional frustration she was going through. "I swear to fucking god," she ground out. "I am going to make this child pay for eternity."

"Another contraction?" Dr. Porte commented as he entered the room. "How long since the last one?"

Lorelai looked at her watch since Logan's hand was still being held captive in Rory's freakishly strong grip. "Three minutes."

The doctor smiled excitedly. "Sounds like someone's ready for the delivery room."

"Really?" Rory asked excitedly, sitting up and letting go of Logan's hand.

"I'll need to do a quick exam to check, but I've got a good feeling."

Christopher got up and excused himself, giving Rory a quick peck on the cheek and some words of encouragement before he went.

Rory laid back, taking Logan's hand again…gently this time, for reassurance, though she was still huffing and puffing uncomfortably.

"Ten centimeters and fully effaced," Dr. Porte confirmed cheerfully as he emerged from between her legs. "Let's go have a baby."

Rory's eyes welled up with tears as she looked at Logan. "He's really coming?" she sniffled "Our baby is really coming?"

"That's the word on the street, Ace," he smiled back at her. His chest felt like it was going to explode with joy. Samuel was coming; he was finally going to meet his son. "Just a little bit longer and you'll be holding him. You got this."

The orderlies came in, quickly disconnecting Rory from all the monitors that weren't coming with her. "Let's get this show on the road," Dr. Porte said. "I'll meet you guys there in a few."

Lorelai started to stand up and Logan's heart sank. Did she think…? He knew they hadn't specifically discussed it, but he figured after their little tête-à-tête in the hallway yesterday that they were on the same page, finally. But apparently not because she was starting to walk towards the door. Then again, maybe Logan was the one on the wrong page here. Did Rory want her mother to be the one with her in the delivery room after all? He glanced from Lorelai to Rory who was also looking at her mother, her eyes wide and Bambi-like. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out but a squeak. It didn't look like he was the one on the wrong page after all. He didn't want to ruin all the progress he'd just made with Lorelai, but he knew Rory was even more scared of messing things up after they'd just reconciled again. Plus, she had enough on her plate to deal with right now.

Logan swallowed, trying to find the words to step-in. But before he could force his mouth open, Lorelai stopped, looking from Rory to him, as a realization came over her eyes.

"Umm," she cleared her throat. "Right. I ummm…" She walked back over to Rory's bed and picked up her daughter's hand. "You…" she wiped away a stray tear with her freehand. "You've got this. You are a great, cool, strong woman, and the best friend a girl could have. And you are going to go in there and give me a beautiful grandbaby!"

"Really?" Rory asked, her voice almost pleading for Lorelai not to hate her.

"Well, I sure hope 'really'. I don't want no ugly grandbabies."

"Mom!"

"You're going to be great…" Lorelai assured her. "And besides," she turned to Logan and gave him a nod. "You've got a pretty strong, cool partner there by your side to help you."

Rory teared up again as the orderlies started to wheel her from the room. "Wait!" she told them. They stopped wheeling and Rory grabbed for Lorelai's hand. "Thank you," she wept.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever…now go have that baby." Rory dropped her hand and she was once again being wheeled to the door.

Lorelai turned to Logan. "Take good care of her," she demanded, but her lips were turned up in a reassuring smile.

"I will," Logan promised her.

"I know." A moment of quiet understanding passed between them, and then, Logan turned and with a couple quick steps, was by Rory's side.

AN: Well folx, Baby Samuel is on the way. Who's excited. I know Rory and Logan are. And things with Lorelai seem to actually be good for real. Will it last? Will Dean rear his ugly head? Will baby Samuel come out with a full head of blonde hair? Or will we ever find out his true paternity at all. Does it matter to you? Will Logan ever reconcile with his family? Will he rejoin HPG and give his son a lavish lifestyle like he had? Or will he loose even his knew job and have to live like a pauper? So many questions and not a lot of time left to answer them. We only have 3 more chapters and an epilogue of this story left. Let me know your predictions on how it will end.