When the Cradle Falls
Chapter Thirteen: Silent Night
December 26, 1996
Driggs, Idaho
Freebird Motel
It had been a typical Winchester Christmas. John was passed out in the Impala—he hadn't even been able to stagger into the motel room. Sam was curled up on one of the beds, having fallen asleep, once again disappointed at his father. Earlier in the night, Sam had suggested they go out to eat, but John was already too far gone, mumbling incoherently. Occasionally the boys would catch their mother's name.
And then there was Dean. The seventeen—nearly eighteen—year-old was on the flat roof of the one story motel. There was snow on the roof, but Dean had pulled up a crappy lawn chair from the pathetic patch of grass in front of the motel. He used the dumpster behind the motel to get a boost up.
Christmas had been a bust, as usual. Dad was drunk and Sammy's hopes were crushed. Dean had been left to pick up the pieces once again. He was left to mope. But that was until he got a call on his cell phone—his first one, something John had given him a few months back.
And that call had been the first person he gave his number to.
The phone started ringing at 2:13 AM. Now it was 4:47.
When the phone went off, Dean hustled into the bathroom and listened for the voice on the other end. "Hello?" he knew it was important—there were so few people who had his number.
"Dean?"
The tone of the voice chilled him. Every muscle stiffened. "Alice? Allie? What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"You sound like you're hurt."
She laughed. "Well, I did just go through the worst pain of my life. The worst, I'm telling you." She paused. "Dean, I had the baby."
There was a swelling feeling inside his chest, like his lungs and heart would pop like balloons. Legs giving out, Dean flopped down onto the toilet. He leaned forward, and pressed the phone deeper to his ear.
"You still there?"
"Yeah." He sounded as if he'd just chased down a werewolf.
"I had the baby."
"T—tell me about it."
She laughed. "It's a boy. His name is Noah Leonardo and he has black black hair. I don't know where that hair came from, but it's beautiful. He has blue eyes and he has some of the most powerful lungs. He's gonna be a fighter. But the amazing thing is, as soon as I held him, he stopped crying and I swear he smiled at me. Dean I love him."
"His middle name is Leonardo?" That was the only thing Dean could think to ask.
There was silence for a moment, as if Alice was offended by what he said. "Get used to it, buddy," she said.
"Where's Cara?" he asked, not able to comment any further on the new baby, for he was still processing it. He had a son. He had a daughter and now a son. His vocabulary seemed extremely limited right now. He stuck with what he knew marginally better, and that was the daughter he'd met once.
"She's at home, sleeping. I went into labor a little before eleven on Christmas and Aunt Jan called over her neighbor to stay with Cara while we went to the hospital. Noah was born a little bit after midnight. It happened so quickly, but it was still more painful than when Cara was born."
Dean ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "I wish I could come see him."
"You should if you can."
"I wish. I'm in some town in Southeastern Idaho that has a population of about one thousand. Alice, I swear I'll be there as soon as I can." He was so determined.
She held up a proverbial hand. "It's okay, Dean. We'll still be here whenever you can make it. You turn eighteen in a month, right? Come see me then. Tell your dad you want to take a cross country trip by yourself."
Frustrated he explained himself. "I just don't want to miss this. I already missed Cara's birth and I've only seen her once and now I won't get to see Noah for at least a month. I just want to hold Noah in one hand and Cara in the other."
"I promise you'll get to, Dean. Until then, I'll tell them every day how much their dad loves and misses them. Okay?"
"Sounds good, Al. How's Cara doing? She's what, a year and a half now?"
"Oh she's a little fiend! She's talking now but she's very quiet and serious. She sometimes just babbles, stringing different words together. But she does it so seriously. The girl's got a brain and I know she's trying to tell me something. And she absolutely insists on walking by herself in public now. She hates when I try to pick her up. She's a good girl, Dean, so independent. I can't wait for her to meet her brother!" Alice alternated talking about Noah and Cara and Dean was content to listen.
Alice had eventually ended the call when she fell asleep for a few moments. That was understandable. After all, she had just given birth.
Dean sat there for a moment, cell phone clasped in his hands. There was a knock at the door and it was Sam. He wanted to know who Dean was talking to.
Dean opened the door and shrugged. "Some girl I gave my number to. She's upset I ditched her at the dance back when we were in Oklahoma."
Sam believed it and just shook his head as Dean slipped out the motel room door. "Where are you going?"
Dean shrugged. "I'm gonna go grab something to eat."
"Dad'll be mad if he finds out you left."
"He's gonna be out for a couple more hours, Sammy."
"Can I come?"
"No, kid, just stay here."
Sam frowned. "Why? I'm hungry too."
Dean was too in his head to even get irritated. "Fine. I lied. I'm just gonna go sit outside and think." He watched his brother. "Still wanna come?"
Sam's face scrunched as he observed his brother for a minute, noticing how spacey Dean looked. Whoever the girl he was on the phone with must've said something pretty nasty. "I'll stay here."
"Salt and lock the door behind me, Sammy. Don't wait up."
"I know, Dean."
So there Dean was on the roof, and thinking about what a real Christmas miracle looked like.
Chicago, Illinois
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
She couldn't sleep. She should've been able to, after being exhausted to her core, being through the worst pain she'd ever experienced in her life.
However, there were only two things on Alice's mind.
One: How was Cara sleeping without Alice? It was the first time Cara had ever been away from Alice for such a long time.
Two: How was the new baby sleeping? Was he safe? What if he was crying?
Alice understood the idea of taking the baby to the nursery at night was to give the mother a chance to sleep.
But Alice couldn't.
Not when her baby wasn't right beside her.
Swinging her legs over the bed, Alice noted her aunt, snoring away in the surprisingly comfortable easy chair in the corner of the room. With a sigh, Alice thought how she would never be able to repay her aunt, a woman who was more of a mother than her actual mother.
Quietly padding out of the room, barefoot and in a hospital gown with large sweatpants underneath, Alice pushed open the ajar door and stepped into the dimly lit hallway. At the intersection of the corridor, was the nurses' station, where several women in colorful scrubs were located.
Tentatively, Alice slowly approached the nurses' station, flinching at a flickering light that was overhead.
Some of the nurses were busy flipping through stacks of paperwork, one looking at a computer, a few yawning and blinking awake. None of them noticed Alice standing there. She supposed the night shift was normally pretty quiet.
With a slight cough, Alice asked, "Excuse me?"
A few of the nurses looked up at her, surprised to see her standing out there in the middle of the night.
"What's wrong?" One of them asked? She was a tiny woman with freckles and puffy red hair, hardly looked like she was out of high school, much less college.
Meaning to laugh, the chuckle came out as a sudden, abrupt sob that scared Alice as much as it scared the nurses. Startled by the bombardment of emotions, Alice brought a hand up to her mouth, and tried to talk around the cries that were bubbling up in her chest. "I couldn't sleep," she said shortly.
The nurse nodded. "Some mothers don't sleep the first night."
"I know he's in the nursery, but I was wondering if I could see my baby?" The words came faster and faster.
The nurse softened even more. Alice realized how absurd she sounded.
"I can't sleep," Alice said again. "Not without my baby. I don't like him being so far away."
"We normally bring the babies to the nursery so that parents have a chance to sleep. But we can certainly bring him back up to your room."
"You can?" In that moment, Alice had never experienced such kindness in her life. She began to cry even further, feeling like a blubbering whale. "Thank you," Alice whispered.
The nurse smiled gently. "I can bring him up. If you want to go back to your room, I'll get him."
Alice shook her head, suddenly panicking at the idea of this woman holding her baby alone, even though this nurse was unfailingly kind. Immediately, she felt bad for thinking that. "No, no. I'd like to come with."
Appearing a bit stunned, the nurse, whose name tag, Alice could finally make out, read Maggie, nodded once and quietly lead the way down the dimmed hallway. She was careful to walk slow, so Alice could keep up. Alice didn't realize how difficult walking could be. She wasn't on her feet for nearly a day after Cara had been born.
"I'm sorry if I bothered you. I know I should've been sleeping-"
Alice was cut off by Maggie's laugh, and immediately became deeply offended, but decided to remain quiet.
"No, trust me, you saved me from boredom. I was about to fall asleep until you came up. People always think the nightshift is non stop, but it's usually pretty dead. We never have more than a few mothers here, it seems."
"But you have to work on Christmas night."
Maggie gave Alice a small smile. "Babies don't stop coming just because it's Christmas." The words could've been cynical, but they weren't. "Here's the nursery." Maggie stopped in front of a door with clouds and teddy bears taped to the outside. The glass from the hallway looked into a softly lit room that was bright blue, with stenciled clouds on the walls. Rows of incubators were lined up, but most were empty.
Alice immediately spotted an incubator with a blue blanket. A black haired head stuck out of the blanket.
Feeling an immediate lump in her throat, Alice tried to patiently wait as Maggie unlocked the door and allowed Alice to slip in.
The nurse at the small desk in the corner looked up in surprise at Maggie and Alice. Maggie went over to the nurse and exchanged a few words with her, and scribbled something on a clipboard.
Captivated by the small and fragile baby in front of her, Alice's hand cupped the side of Noah's small face. She wanted to burst into tears, partially unbelieving the little baby had come from her.
There had been a small part of her that was worried she wouldn't be able to love another baby as much as she loved Cara, but she found the amount of love she had for Cara didn't shrink, but instead, Alice's heart grew in size, accompanying for the newfound love she had for Noah. It was an amazing thing. Truly, Alice had never known someone could love something as much as she loved Cara and Noah.
She clutched onto the incubator, nearly weeping thinking about how lucky she was.
She was the luckiest mom in the world, the most blessed person there was.
And now, there was excitement. She couldn't wait for Dean to meet Noah for the first time, to hold him. She regretted he never got to know Cara when she was this tiny, but he would at least know Noah.
Under Maggie's instruction, the bassinet Noah was in was wheeled back to the room. Alice was careful to make sure she steered it slowly and smoothly, not wanting to wake up the deeply sleeping baby.
Back in the room, Maggie positioned the bassinet next to the bed and helped Alice climb back into it.
"Thank you," Alice whispered, attention focused on her new baby.
Maggie nodded and slipped out the door, leaving it open just a crack.
Leaning over the bassinet, Alice ran a finger along Noah's soft skin, feeling the short, quick breaths he took. Even at only a few hours old, he slept like a rock.
Carefully, Alice reached her arms around Noah and pulled him out of the small bed. She was careful not to jostle him, but sure at any minute he would wake up and start crying.
However, all he did was twitch peacefully and bring a tiny fist up to his mouth.
Alice continued smoothing his dark hair back, and she tried to figure out where he possibly could've gotten such black hair from. His eyes were a bright blue, and she wondered when they would turn brown, like they did for Cara.
"You're perfect," she whispered, and leaned down to kiss his forehead.
Deciding he was the sweetest thing, Alice hummed him Christmas carols she remembered her mother singing rather stiffly when she was a small child.
Christmas at the Mercer house was always a stuffy event. Alice was always forced into her nicest dress, which for the holidays was an itchy red plaid dress with a starched white lace collar and matching fringe around the sleeves and hem of the dress. Christmas Eve night involved what was supposed to be a feast but usually consisted of dried up meat loaf and damp vegetables. After that, the family would walk down the street in the cold the couple of blocks to the large cathedral-like church that was the integral worship place in town. Alice would then sit, stand, kneel, repeat, for three hours, until it reached midnight, after which, an exhausted Alice would be dragged back home and told to go to bed. The next morning, Alice still couldn't believe, she was dragged back to church for an hour, before she could even open her presents. Her mother believed very strongly Santa was sacrilegious so all the presents were things like socks or headbands from her parents. Every few years she would get something she truly wanted.
After that entire ordeal of a second mass in a few hours, Alice's ancient paternal grandparents would come over for dinner. They were simply an older, crustier, crankier version of her parents. They spent the entire meal criticizing Sherry for how she was raising Alice, and then would turn their judgments onto their granddaughter.
Luckily, Alice only had to see her grandparents once a year, and that terrible tradition had stopped when she went to live with Jan. Alice could only imagine this year her grandparents were spitting all over her old room, utterly disgusted with their granddaughter who had a child-now two-out of wedlock.
But Alice recognized these children were the things that would save her from becoming her mother or grandmother.
Returning her attention to Noah, Alice smiled down at him. "I promise you will never have as horrible as a Christmas as I did when I was little."
She laughed at the absurdity of her old Christmas traditions, now that she was free from the boring and stiff ensnarements of her childhood, no longer waking up dreading the normally cheery holiday.
The hormonal tears Alice had shed were dried on her face. She wiped them away with the back of one hand, realizing once again this maybe wasn't all she had ever wanted, but it was all she had ever needed.
It was the perfect, the most silent of nights.
Here is another pivotal chapter in the story! I hope you enjoyed it an drop a review/favorite/like to let me know what you think. Also, if anyone is interested, I am in the process of posting and crafting a Harry Potter fic that has been in my head for awhile. If anyone is interested, be on the look out for that in the next couple days. Also, PM me if you have any interest in knowing what that's about, or knowing in general about this story as well.
Have a great rest of summer everyone!