Keryl Raist's Blog, page 18
October 21, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 239
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 239: Pop
Every home has its own patterns and rhythms, ebbs and flows of action, habits, and routine. Tossing a new baby into that home doesn’t so much disrupt those flows as knock them over, shake them up, recolor them, and then put them back in the wrong place.
And for as close as Gibbs is to Tim and Abby, he’s been to a greater or lesser extent, outside of those rhythms.
But not anymore. With the addition of Kelly to the mix, and him stepping into full Grandpa mode, he’s slipped fully into Tim and Abby’s home. He’s not an outsider anymore, at all, he’s home.
And he’s very welcome here.
He waited until 0630 to head over. And getting to their house, he crept in, if they were sleeping, he wasn’t going to wake anyone up.
Gibbs didn’t hear anything, so he hoped everyone was, for the moment at least, asleep.
Then he headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. In there, he noticed nothing that looked at all like breakfast had been attempted, so he started rooting around for something to make them for breakfast.
When he’s not eating take out/at the diner, Gibbs is a toast or oatmeal, eggs, and bacon guy. It’s not complicated, or for that matter particularly good for him, but it’s hot, easy, and he doesn’t feel hungry half way to lunch like he does when he tries the ‘better for him, low-fat’ stuff that various wives and girlfriends have attempted to feed him over the years in an effort to keep him alive longer.
His dad made it 88 years on a more or less all fat, all protein, all caffeine, all bourbon diet, he’s figuring it won’t do him any harm, either.
Tim wandered down a few minutes later, looking like the walking dead, the naked walking dead. Apparently pants really are optional at the McGee house, or Tim is really so tired that it just didn’t click that if he could smell coffee and bacon that someone else had to be in the house to provide those things.
Gibbs smiled at him, chuckling a little, and handed over the cup of coffee (one third caf/two thirds de-caf, good, hefty slug of milk, just the way Tim likes it.) and took Kelly from him.
He held her, noticing she was wide awake, looking pretty perky, and said, “You didn’t let Mom or Dad get any sleep at all, did you?”
Tim sort of grunted at him. Took a long drink of the coffee, sighed, seemed to notice he was naked, and headed right back out of the kitchen without saying a word.
When he headed back down, about five minutes later, having not just remembered that conversation with Abby about shifting their rather relaxed dress code a bit, but also having located some pants, he found Gibbs in their kitchen, Kelly held securely to one shoulder, while he, one-handed, scrambled eggs.
Tim had to admit he was pretty impressed by that.
Then he swooped over and grabbed Kelly because no one, not even the all-knowing, all-competent Gibbs is holding his daughter one-handed near a hot stove.
Gibbs laughed at that, too.
Tim just looked at him and said, “You’re lucky I’m not Abby, she would have yelled at you and cried.”
Gibbs nodded at that. “Rough night?”
“Let’s put it this way, we are never, ever trying co-sleeping again.”
Gibbs rose an eyebrow, not sure what co-sleeping was.
“Baby in the bed with us.”
Gibbs winced a little at that. “They don’t like sleeping alone. You do that and they’ll decide they want to sleep with you every night until they’re seven.”
“Is that the voice of experience?”
“I was home when Kelly was born, but got sent to Germany when she was four months old, for four months. We were out of Lejeune then, and Shannon’s family was still in Stillwater back then. So, little baby, no real support for Shannon, and Kelly was never a great sleeper. Was just easier for the two of them to sleep together. And of course I get home, and I want my wife back, but my daughter had other opinions on the subject and wasn’t happy at the idea of sharing Mom or being exiled out of the nice warm bed where Mom was because this strange guy showed up and wanted all of her attention.”
Tim smiles a little at that, holding his Kelly, petting her back.
“Probably four solid years where I’d be off, and then come home, and Kelly was always happy to see me until bedtime when she was less than thrilled to suddenly have to share Mom. I wasn’t winning any husband or father of the year awards on that one, couldn’t have been easy on Shannon, stuck between us, and I wasn’t exactly sympathetic to Kelly wanting bed space with Shannon.”
Tim laughed at that. “Rumors about Marines home on leave are not unfounded.”
“No, they aren’t. Especially since, unlike a lot of the other guys, I wasn’t hitting the red light districts.”
Tim rose an eyebrow at him.
“Most of the world isn’t too uptight about working girls. Prostitution is more or less legal in Germany, and it’s a less than two hour long train ride, depending on where you are, to Amsterdam where it was full on legal. Germany’s was the staging point for pretty much anything that happened in the Middle East, where there’s no booze, no women, no fun, so yeah, most of the guys partied pretty hard when they had off time in Germany.”
Tim smiled at that, too. Gibbs put two plates on the kitchen table, breakfast for both of them, and set a third plate in the oven on warm for Abby.
“She’s sleeping, right?”
“I really hope so. The nighttime deal we’ve got is I’m on baby fetching and poop removal duty, and she does the feeding and burping part.”
Gibbs nods, eating a bite of his eggs.
“So right now, with any luck, she’s sleeping, and I’m dealing with her.” He set Kelly in the bouncy chair, still on the kitchen table from last night, and she sat there, kicking around a little. Tim’s keeping an eye on her, having her arms and legs free to kick and play is good, but if she gets too much of it, she’ll get agitated. So he’s watching to see when she’ll want to get swaddled again.
“She doing better from yesterday?”
Tim shrugged. “Pretty quiet this morning. Didn’t look happy about Kelly not being in bed with us. But seemed resigned that if I was getting her, it wouldn’t be more work for her. I don’t know, maybe her sleeping with us is the right plan, but I won’t sleep if she’s in bed with us, and I just don’t see anything good coming out of both of us being exhausted all the time.” Then a thought hit him, and Tim got up, grabbed the plate out of the oven, dropped it back onto the rack, because it was hot, found a hot pad, and grabbed it again. “She can only go up and down the stairs once a day. Gonna take this up, that way she doesn’t have to come down if she doesn’t want to.”
“Okay.”
He was half way out of the kitchen when Gibbs said, “Fork.”
Tim made a u-turn, grabbed some cutlery, and headed back up.
During breakfast, Kelly fell back to sleep. Shortly after that, Tim finished his food and Gibbs sent him to go sleep some more, too.
Eventually, while Kelly was still sleeping, Abby wandered down.
“Feeling better?” Gibbs asked. He was sitting at their kitchen table, cup of coffee next to him, reading something on his phone. Abby knew Tim had stuck a Kindle ap on there last year. She didn’t know that Gibbs had ever used it.
Abby shrugged. “Hungry.”
“Let’s get that fixed.” He got up. “Sit, rest, what do you want?”
She shrugged again. “Don’t have a taste for anything. Just hungry.”
While it’s true that Gibbs knows everyone’s drink orders, and a few little treats they all like, he’s not getting a drink or a little treat. So, he’s sort of floundering here with a request for something as vague as “food.”
Well, he’s floundering because he wants to get her something to remind her why she likes eating and that food is attached to pleasure and pleasure is a good thing. Sure, he can whip up a sandwich and a glass of juice easily enough, but he wants this to be something she wants but just doesn’t know she wants.
For a moment there, he was thinking now would be a really good time for Tim to wake up and take over, but Tim doesn’t have Gibbs’ near psychic level of perfect timing, especially when he’s dead asleep, so Gibbs is puttering around their kitchen trying to figure out what to feed Abby, who is sitting, quietly, looking awfully listless, at the kitchen table.
“Need more pain meds?”
She nodded at that.
So he got a dose, (had to fish out his glasses to read the dose and directions. That’s the real reason he’s willing to read on the Kindle ap Tim stuck on his phone, he can make the text big enough he doesn’t have to use his glasses to see it.) and the glass of cran-raspberry juice Abby likes, and gave them to her.
Finally, he decided that speed was probably more important than taste when it came to feeding Abby, so he used the last of the bacon he made and put together a BLT with lots of thick slices of tomato and three slices of bread.
He knows that part of Tim staying in good shape is not having lot of junk food around the house, but chips are really good with a BLT, and they just don’t seem to have any, though he thought the cashews might do pretty well in their place. Crunchy and salty.
Abby tore through the sandwich and nuts, and he could tell from the speed she was eating that that wasn’t enough food. There were peaches, and apparently Palmer had bought out every sort of ice cream in the store, so he dipped up a bowl of vanilla ice cream and cut up the peach, serving them up, too.
She tore through that pretty fast, too.
“More?”
“No. Eat too much more, my stomach will start to ache.”
“Okay. Want more to drink?” He sort of remembered that nursing was thirsty as well as hungry work.
“Yes!”
He looked at the glass next to her, and then went digging through their cabinets. “Do you not have any Caf-Pow glasses here?”
“Nope.”
He filled up three regular sized glasses for her. “That should do you for a little while.” Then he made a note on his phone, next to the coffee note, to get some bigger cups. “You wanna go sit on the sofa, maybe be a little more comfortable?”
She nodded, got up, slowly, and headed in that direction. Gibbs took the glasses first, and set them on the little table next to the sofa. Then he carefully picked up the bouncy chair, and took it to the dining room table, where they could still easily see and hear Kelly. She stirred a little when he moved the chair, but didn’t wake up.
Then he headed over to the sofa, pulled the recline lever for Abby, so she could lean back easily, and sat next to her, realizing that part of why she didn’t recline it back for herself was that you have to use your stomach and back muscles to push it back, so he pushed it back, wrapped his arm around her, kissed her forehead as she snuggled in, and said, “Talk to me, Abbs.”
She was quiet for a long minute, and then finally said, “I feel like I’m splitting in half. Like I can feel the little voice that’s calm and rational and knows that none of this is the end of the world and everyone throughout all of history managed to do this just fine talking to me, but it keeps getting drowned out by this huge, scary, emotional, terrified, nervous voice that feels like if I ever close my eyes something horrible is going to happen.”
“I know how that feels. As long as it keeps talking, you’re still okay. It’s when it shuts up that you’re in trouble.”
Abby looks up at Gibbs, suddenly getting that Gibbs has been far enough gone that little voice completely vanished. “What if it shuts up? I'm so scared I'm going to lose it.”
“We’re here. We’ll help you find it again. We’ll keep you and everyone else safe until we do.”
“What if I can’t find it, what if it just goes?” She’s looking up at him with big, scared eyes.
“It won't. It's always there somewhere. Just sometimes it's hard to find. And if you need it, we’ll carry you until you can find your way again.”
“I feel like, if I stay quiet, I can still, sort of, faintly, hear that little normal voice.”
“Then you be as quiet as you need to be." He kissed her again. "Tim and I can deal with it. Wanna go get more sleep?”
“Not worth it. She’ll wake up and want to eat soon.” Abby looked at Kelly and back at Gibbs. “I swear I know why the cows moo, now. I’m so sore, I’m about ready to start mooing.”
Gibbs kissed her forehead, smiled, and said, quietly, “Mmmoooooo.”
For a second Abby just stared at him, utterly shocked, then she felt the laugh start. “God, Gibbs, don’t make me laugh. It hurts!”
He hugged her a little tighter. “Sorry. Just wanted to see you smile.”
“You’re making jokes and apologizing? Who are you, and what did you do with Gibbs?”
“Grandpa’s prerogative. I’m allowed to be goofy when I’m home with my family.”
Abby smiled at him, tearing up. “Yeah, you are.”
“Hey, stop that. Don’t want you crying over me.”
“Too bad. New mommy prerogative. I get to cry when and wherever I want.”
He kissed her again. “Yeah, you do.”
Eventually, Kelly did wake up, and Gibbs noticed one snag in the set up at the McGee house, changing table and diaper stuff is upstairs.
Abby can’t go upstairs.
Tim’s sleeping.
So, once again he’s on diaper duty, which was never his favorite baby-oriented chore, but small crying person wants food and feeding her is going to be a lot more pleasant if she’s clean, so he grabs Kelly and heads up to the changing table.
It does shock him how fast it comes back. Before Kelly was born, he’s sure he hadn’t thought about the mechanics of a diaper change, let alone for a little baby, in more than thirty years. But his body remembers this.
His hands know the routine.
It seems like the wipes and diapers are better than they were. More snug. Less leaky. But the basics are all the same.
He was never a huge music fan. Most of the time it was just there. But humming or quietly singing something seemed to make his Kelly happy, give her something to listen to, maybe made him feel like he was communicating with her, when neither of them had much to say.
Shannon had always been a Simon and Garfunkle and John Denver fan. He has very clear images of her sitting in the rocking chair, nursing Kelly, gently rocking, humming Scarboro Fair or Leaving on a Jet Plane.
He tended to go back further. Elvis and memories of the days when his parents were happy, healthy, and getting along.
So, as he’s lifting up little legs, and wiping off a tiny tush, he’s quietly singing: “Wise men say/Only fools rush in/But I can’t help/Falling in love with you…” Kelly’s watching him, squirming a bit, crying a little, probably doesn’t like how cold the wipes feel on her skin.
He smiled at her, looking amused. “Yeah, my Kelly was never very impressed with my singing, either.” But he kept it up, moving to the next verse, wondering where the hell they kept the baby powder, because he’s not seeing any of it, and step three, after remove soiled diaper, remove baby poop, was apply powder, but if they’ve got it, it’s not here. So he puts the clean diaper on, snaps up the onesie, and swaddles Kelly nice and snug, holding her against his shoulder.
“Ready for lunch? I know your mom’s ready to feed you.”
He found Abby on the sofa, watching… something. He’s got no idea what it is, but there are two guys who are very clearly not FBI agents, not even TV’s idea of what an FBI agent looks like, they’re both way too pretty, investigating something, asking some really non-standard questions.
He sat down next to her, and handed Kelly over. “All cleaned up and ready to eat. Do you guys have baby powder?”
“No. Not good for them. They breathe it in, and it’s bad for their lungs.”
“Of course.” He and all seventy-million of his baby boomer compatriots all grew up just fine with baby powder and all of them managed to keep their kids alive while using it, but if it’s bad for babies, he’s not going to argue. (He may, however, mention to it Fornell, who he’s sure will sympathize. And, it occurs to him, Penny might, too.)
He got up, washed his hands, brought down some diapers, wipes, a few blankets, and set up a make-shift changing table on the dining room table, and sure, it might not be the most sanitary thing ever, but he’s figuring that’s the most functional place for him to do it.
Then he sat down next to Abby, wrapping his arm around her, watching her nurse Kelly and basking in this, being home, wrapped around his girls, feeling really, right, for the first time in years.
Two days later, Tim gave him a copy of the shot of all three of them snoozing on the sofa.
Next
Chapter 239: Pop
Every home has its own patterns and rhythms, ebbs and flows of action, habits, and routine. Tossing a new baby into that home doesn’t so much disrupt those flows as knock them over, shake them up, recolor them, and then put them back in the wrong place.
And for as close as Gibbs is to Tim and Abby, he’s been to a greater or lesser extent, outside of those rhythms.
But not anymore. With the addition of Kelly to the mix, and him stepping into full Grandpa mode, he’s slipped fully into Tim and Abby’s home. He’s not an outsider anymore, at all, he’s home.
And he’s very welcome here.
He waited until 0630 to head over. And getting to their house, he crept in, if they were sleeping, he wasn’t going to wake anyone up.
Gibbs didn’t hear anything, so he hoped everyone was, for the moment at least, asleep.
Then he headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. In there, he noticed nothing that looked at all like breakfast had been attempted, so he started rooting around for something to make them for breakfast.
When he’s not eating take out/at the diner, Gibbs is a toast or oatmeal, eggs, and bacon guy. It’s not complicated, or for that matter particularly good for him, but it’s hot, easy, and he doesn’t feel hungry half way to lunch like he does when he tries the ‘better for him, low-fat’ stuff that various wives and girlfriends have attempted to feed him over the years in an effort to keep him alive longer.
His dad made it 88 years on a more or less all fat, all protein, all caffeine, all bourbon diet, he’s figuring it won’t do him any harm, either.
Tim wandered down a few minutes later, looking like the walking dead, the naked walking dead. Apparently pants really are optional at the McGee house, or Tim is really so tired that it just didn’t click that if he could smell coffee and bacon that someone else had to be in the house to provide those things.
Gibbs smiled at him, chuckling a little, and handed over the cup of coffee (one third caf/two thirds de-caf, good, hefty slug of milk, just the way Tim likes it.) and took Kelly from him.
He held her, noticing she was wide awake, looking pretty perky, and said, “You didn’t let Mom or Dad get any sleep at all, did you?”
Tim sort of grunted at him. Took a long drink of the coffee, sighed, seemed to notice he was naked, and headed right back out of the kitchen without saying a word.
When he headed back down, about five minutes later, having not just remembered that conversation with Abby about shifting their rather relaxed dress code a bit, but also having located some pants, he found Gibbs in their kitchen, Kelly held securely to one shoulder, while he, one-handed, scrambled eggs.
Tim had to admit he was pretty impressed by that.
Then he swooped over and grabbed Kelly because no one, not even the all-knowing, all-competent Gibbs is holding his daughter one-handed near a hot stove.
Gibbs laughed at that, too.
Tim just looked at him and said, “You’re lucky I’m not Abby, she would have yelled at you and cried.”
Gibbs nodded at that. “Rough night?”
“Let’s put it this way, we are never, ever trying co-sleeping again.”
Gibbs rose an eyebrow, not sure what co-sleeping was.
“Baby in the bed with us.”
Gibbs winced a little at that. “They don’t like sleeping alone. You do that and they’ll decide they want to sleep with you every night until they’re seven.”
“Is that the voice of experience?”
“I was home when Kelly was born, but got sent to Germany when she was four months old, for four months. We were out of Lejeune then, and Shannon’s family was still in Stillwater back then. So, little baby, no real support for Shannon, and Kelly was never a great sleeper. Was just easier for the two of them to sleep together. And of course I get home, and I want my wife back, but my daughter had other opinions on the subject and wasn’t happy at the idea of sharing Mom or being exiled out of the nice warm bed where Mom was because this strange guy showed up and wanted all of her attention.”
Tim smiles a little at that, holding his Kelly, petting her back.
“Probably four solid years where I’d be off, and then come home, and Kelly was always happy to see me until bedtime when she was less than thrilled to suddenly have to share Mom. I wasn’t winning any husband or father of the year awards on that one, couldn’t have been easy on Shannon, stuck between us, and I wasn’t exactly sympathetic to Kelly wanting bed space with Shannon.”
Tim laughed at that. “Rumors about Marines home on leave are not unfounded.”
“No, they aren’t. Especially since, unlike a lot of the other guys, I wasn’t hitting the red light districts.”
Tim rose an eyebrow at him.
“Most of the world isn’t too uptight about working girls. Prostitution is more or less legal in Germany, and it’s a less than two hour long train ride, depending on where you are, to Amsterdam where it was full on legal. Germany’s was the staging point for pretty much anything that happened in the Middle East, where there’s no booze, no women, no fun, so yeah, most of the guys partied pretty hard when they had off time in Germany.”
Tim smiled at that, too. Gibbs put two plates on the kitchen table, breakfast for both of them, and set a third plate in the oven on warm for Abby.
“She’s sleeping, right?”
“I really hope so. The nighttime deal we’ve got is I’m on baby fetching and poop removal duty, and she does the feeding and burping part.”
Gibbs nods, eating a bite of his eggs.
“So right now, with any luck, she’s sleeping, and I’m dealing with her.” He set Kelly in the bouncy chair, still on the kitchen table from last night, and she sat there, kicking around a little. Tim’s keeping an eye on her, having her arms and legs free to kick and play is good, but if she gets too much of it, she’ll get agitated. So he’s watching to see when she’ll want to get swaddled again.
“She doing better from yesterday?”
Tim shrugged. “Pretty quiet this morning. Didn’t look happy about Kelly not being in bed with us. But seemed resigned that if I was getting her, it wouldn’t be more work for her. I don’t know, maybe her sleeping with us is the right plan, but I won’t sleep if she’s in bed with us, and I just don’t see anything good coming out of both of us being exhausted all the time.” Then a thought hit him, and Tim got up, grabbed the plate out of the oven, dropped it back onto the rack, because it was hot, found a hot pad, and grabbed it again. “She can only go up and down the stairs once a day. Gonna take this up, that way she doesn’t have to come down if she doesn’t want to.”
“Okay.”
He was half way out of the kitchen when Gibbs said, “Fork.”
Tim made a u-turn, grabbed some cutlery, and headed back up.
During breakfast, Kelly fell back to sleep. Shortly after that, Tim finished his food and Gibbs sent him to go sleep some more, too.
Eventually, while Kelly was still sleeping, Abby wandered down.
“Feeling better?” Gibbs asked. He was sitting at their kitchen table, cup of coffee next to him, reading something on his phone. Abby knew Tim had stuck a Kindle ap on there last year. She didn’t know that Gibbs had ever used it.
Abby shrugged. “Hungry.”
“Let’s get that fixed.” He got up. “Sit, rest, what do you want?”
She shrugged again. “Don’t have a taste for anything. Just hungry.”
While it’s true that Gibbs knows everyone’s drink orders, and a few little treats they all like, he’s not getting a drink or a little treat. So, he’s sort of floundering here with a request for something as vague as “food.”
Well, he’s floundering because he wants to get her something to remind her why she likes eating and that food is attached to pleasure and pleasure is a good thing. Sure, he can whip up a sandwich and a glass of juice easily enough, but he wants this to be something she wants but just doesn’t know she wants.
For a moment there, he was thinking now would be a really good time for Tim to wake up and take over, but Tim doesn’t have Gibbs’ near psychic level of perfect timing, especially when he’s dead asleep, so Gibbs is puttering around their kitchen trying to figure out what to feed Abby, who is sitting, quietly, looking awfully listless, at the kitchen table.
“Need more pain meds?”
She nodded at that.
So he got a dose, (had to fish out his glasses to read the dose and directions. That’s the real reason he’s willing to read on the Kindle ap Tim stuck on his phone, he can make the text big enough he doesn’t have to use his glasses to see it.) and the glass of cran-raspberry juice Abby likes, and gave them to her.
Finally, he decided that speed was probably more important than taste when it came to feeding Abby, so he used the last of the bacon he made and put together a BLT with lots of thick slices of tomato and three slices of bread.
He knows that part of Tim staying in good shape is not having lot of junk food around the house, but chips are really good with a BLT, and they just don’t seem to have any, though he thought the cashews might do pretty well in their place. Crunchy and salty.
Abby tore through the sandwich and nuts, and he could tell from the speed she was eating that that wasn’t enough food. There were peaches, and apparently Palmer had bought out every sort of ice cream in the store, so he dipped up a bowl of vanilla ice cream and cut up the peach, serving them up, too.
She tore through that pretty fast, too.
“More?”
“No. Eat too much more, my stomach will start to ache.”
“Okay. Want more to drink?” He sort of remembered that nursing was thirsty as well as hungry work.
“Yes!”
He looked at the glass next to her, and then went digging through their cabinets. “Do you not have any Caf-Pow glasses here?”
“Nope.”
He filled up three regular sized glasses for her. “That should do you for a little while.” Then he made a note on his phone, next to the coffee note, to get some bigger cups. “You wanna go sit on the sofa, maybe be a little more comfortable?”
She nodded, got up, slowly, and headed in that direction. Gibbs took the glasses first, and set them on the little table next to the sofa. Then he carefully picked up the bouncy chair, and took it to the dining room table, where they could still easily see and hear Kelly. She stirred a little when he moved the chair, but didn’t wake up.
Then he headed over to the sofa, pulled the recline lever for Abby, so she could lean back easily, and sat next to her, realizing that part of why she didn’t recline it back for herself was that you have to use your stomach and back muscles to push it back, so he pushed it back, wrapped his arm around her, kissed her forehead as she snuggled in, and said, “Talk to me, Abbs.”
She was quiet for a long minute, and then finally said, “I feel like I’m splitting in half. Like I can feel the little voice that’s calm and rational and knows that none of this is the end of the world and everyone throughout all of history managed to do this just fine talking to me, but it keeps getting drowned out by this huge, scary, emotional, terrified, nervous voice that feels like if I ever close my eyes something horrible is going to happen.”
“I know how that feels. As long as it keeps talking, you’re still okay. It’s when it shuts up that you’re in trouble.”
Abby looks up at Gibbs, suddenly getting that Gibbs has been far enough gone that little voice completely vanished. “What if it shuts up? I'm so scared I'm going to lose it.”
“We’re here. We’ll help you find it again. We’ll keep you and everyone else safe until we do.”
“What if I can’t find it, what if it just goes?” She’s looking up at him with big, scared eyes.
“It won't. It's always there somewhere. Just sometimes it's hard to find. And if you need it, we’ll carry you until you can find your way again.”
“I feel like, if I stay quiet, I can still, sort of, faintly, hear that little normal voice.”
“Then you be as quiet as you need to be." He kissed her again. "Tim and I can deal with it. Wanna go get more sleep?”
“Not worth it. She’ll wake up and want to eat soon.” Abby looked at Kelly and back at Gibbs. “I swear I know why the cows moo, now. I’m so sore, I’m about ready to start mooing.”
Gibbs kissed her forehead, smiled, and said, quietly, “Mmmoooooo.”
For a second Abby just stared at him, utterly shocked, then she felt the laugh start. “God, Gibbs, don’t make me laugh. It hurts!”
He hugged her a little tighter. “Sorry. Just wanted to see you smile.”
“You’re making jokes and apologizing? Who are you, and what did you do with Gibbs?”
“Grandpa’s prerogative. I’m allowed to be goofy when I’m home with my family.”
Abby smiled at him, tearing up. “Yeah, you are.”
“Hey, stop that. Don’t want you crying over me.”
“Too bad. New mommy prerogative. I get to cry when and wherever I want.”
He kissed her again. “Yeah, you do.”
Eventually, Kelly did wake up, and Gibbs noticed one snag in the set up at the McGee house, changing table and diaper stuff is upstairs.
Abby can’t go upstairs.
Tim’s sleeping.
So, once again he’s on diaper duty, which was never his favorite baby-oriented chore, but small crying person wants food and feeding her is going to be a lot more pleasant if she’s clean, so he grabs Kelly and heads up to the changing table.
It does shock him how fast it comes back. Before Kelly was born, he’s sure he hadn’t thought about the mechanics of a diaper change, let alone for a little baby, in more than thirty years. But his body remembers this.
His hands know the routine.
It seems like the wipes and diapers are better than they were. More snug. Less leaky. But the basics are all the same.
He was never a huge music fan. Most of the time it was just there. But humming or quietly singing something seemed to make his Kelly happy, give her something to listen to, maybe made him feel like he was communicating with her, when neither of them had much to say.
Shannon had always been a Simon and Garfunkle and John Denver fan. He has very clear images of her sitting in the rocking chair, nursing Kelly, gently rocking, humming Scarboro Fair or Leaving on a Jet Plane.
He tended to go back further. Elvis and memories of the days when his parents were happy, healthy, and getting along.
So, as he’s lifting up little legs, and wiping off a tiny tush, he’s quietly singing: “Wise men say/Only fools rush in/But I can’t help/Falling in love with you…” Kelly’s watching him, squirming a bit, crying a little, probably doesn’t like how cold the wipes feel on her skin.
He smiled at her, looking amused. “Yeah, my Kelly was never very impressed with my singing, either.” But he kept it up, moving to the next verse, wondering where the hell they kept the baby powder, because he’s not seeing any of it, and step three, after remove soiled diaper, remove baby poop, was apply powder, but if they’ve got it, it’s not here. So he puts the clean diaper on, snaps up the onesie, and swaddles Kelly nice and snug, holding her against his shoulder.
“Ready for lunch? I know your mom’s ready to feed you.”
He found Abby on the sofa, watching… something. He’s got no idea what it is, but there are two guys who are very clearly not FBI agents, not even TV’s idea of what an FBI agent looks like, they’re both way too pretty, investigating something, asking some really non-standard questions.
He sat down next to her, and handed Kelly over. “All cleaned up and ready to eat. Do you guys have baby powder?”
“No. Not good for them. They breathe it in, and it’s bad for their lungs.”
“Of course.” He and all seventy-million of his baby boomer compatriots all grew up just fine with baby powder and all of them managed to keep their kids alive while using it, but if it’s bad for babies, he’s not going to argue. (He may, however, mention to it Fornell, who he’s sure will sympathize. And, it occurs to him, Penny might, too.)
He got up, washed his hands, brought down some diapers, wipes, a few blankets, and set up a make-shift changing table on the dining room table, and sure, it might not be the most sanitary thing ever, but he’s figuring that’s the most functional place for him to do it.
Then he sat down next to Abby, wrapping his arm around her, watching her nurse Kelly and basking in this, being home, wrapped around his girls, feeling really, right, for the first time in years.
Two days later, Tim gave him a copy of the shot of all three of them snoozing on the sofa.
Next
October 20, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 238
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 238: Sleep
By the time Kelly finished eating, and got burped, it was nine thirty, so, bedtime. Early bedtime, but right now nothing sounds better to either Tim or Abby then a good long sleep.
So, when he finished burping her, Tim got up and started heading toward Kelly’s nursery.
“Where are you going?”
He stopped, looked at Abby, bit surprised. “Putting her in her crib?”
“I thought she’d sleep with us.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Just. I know we didn't talk about it, but getting in and out of bed is awfully hard right now, and if she’s right next to me, that’ll make nursing easier.”
“Good point.” So he turns around and lays Kelly in the middle of their bed, she’s all swaddled up, and her eyes are pretty droopy, so he’s hopeful she’ll fall asleep soon. And then stops. Normally, he’d go brush his teeth, strip off, and go to sleep. He looks back at Abby. “Is this really okay?”
“People have been sleeping with their kids since before there were beds.”
“Okay, yeah, I know that, but… They’ve got to sleep on their backs, and they can’t have any blankets or stuffed animals or pillows in there because they can get trapped in little CO2 pockets and SIDS and… And in our bed she’ll between us, and we’re a lot bigger than stuffed animals, and…” he points to their bed, “blankets, lots of blankets, and we’ve got five pillows.”
Abby thought about that while very slowly twisting around and getting out of bed, going to join him on the whole brushing teeth getting ready to sleep thing. She pointed to the bathroom, so they could talk while Kelly drifted off.
He joined her in there, half closing the door, like that would cut down on the noise some.
“I think SIDS rates are supposed to be lower for babies who co-sleep,” she said, reaching for her toothbrush.
“How does that work?”
“I have no idea. But you’ve got several computers less than a hundred feet away, so I’m sure you could go find out if you’re really curious.”
“Fine.” Brush, rinse, swish, spit.
“Are you going to?”
“Not tonight. I got online, and it took me three tries to successfully upload pictures. Brain’s not exactly firing on all cylinders today. Probably a good thing Jethro’s sticking around during the day, because I know I wasn’t aware of how fried I was until I tried to do something more complicated that mix water with formula.”
Abby laughed a little at that, then winced, laughing still really hurts, and said, “Leon’s don’t hack NCIS thing making more sense.”
“Oh, God. I wrote the damn firewall,left a path for myself, and I couldn’t get through it right now.”
She smiled and made herself not laugh at that.
He headed off, giving her some alone time in the bathroom, and began to get ready for bed, namely taking off his clothing. He makes a quick mental note that laundry needs to be done, and that since she’s the one who usually does laundry, and there’s no way in Hell she’s doing laundry tomorrow, that he needs to take care of it.
And having taken note of that, and divested himself of his clothing, another thought hits, Kelly’s in their bed. He’s naked.
Is it okay to sleep naked with your baby daughter?
“You’re glaring at the bed,” Abby said as she got out of the bathroom.
“Do I need pajamas?”
“Why would you need pajamas?”
“’Cause it’s not just you in our bed?”
“I don’t think Kelly will mind.”
He flashes her a could you miss my point more completely look. “You’re wearing pajamas.” Sort of. She’s got on soft, cotton drawstring pants (his) and one of his button downs, as well.
“I’m bleeding, my boobs are leaking, and one of the more endearing bits of just having had a baby is night sweats.”
“Good points.”
“Yeah.” She looked down at her feet, realized she still can’t see them when standing up, but she remembers how swollen they are, and how each individual toe looks like a little sausage, and how if she pokes herself in the leg, it’ll leave a dent. “All of that fluid has to come back out of me again.”
“Okay. Just… we’re pretty casual about being dressed, you know?” In that either of them is likely to be naked at any given time assuming it’s warm enough, that’s true.
“Yes.” She’s standing next to the side of the bed, and once again he gives her a hand into their bed. When he’s done, she’s sitting up, and staring at the place on the bed where her torso would go if she was lying down with something of a scowl.
“What is it?”
“Psyching myself up to try to lie down.”
“Can I help?”
“Nah. Gotta do it on my own.”
“Not today you don’t, not if you don’t want to.”
“The less I move the more it’ll hurt and the less functional the scar will be.” She planted her hands behind her, rested as much of her weight as she could onto her arms, and slowly lowered herself down, and yes, even with that it hurt. A full, pulling, burning near rip sensation that doing anything that involved her abs these days produced.
“At least let me help you get up.”
“I like that plan.” She stared up at the ceiling while saying. “That last two months I would have given my eye teeth to lay on my back. Now I really wish I could lay on my side again.” Because right now, laying on her side involves her insides feeling like they’re going to fall out, and that’s not precisely a comfortable.
“Soon.”
“Yep.” She looked away from the ceiling and back to him. “So, it’s not so much sleeping naked with her, as you’re looking for what are our we’ve got-a-kid-now naked rules?”
“Yes. You want blankets?” She nodded, and he pulled them up over her. He sat down on his side of the bed, got under the covers, made sure they were up over him, and Abby, but pushed down in the middle so they weren’t over Kelly, and rolled to face Abby, Kelly laying between them, snoozing away.
“I think as long as you’re in your own room, you can wear whatever you want and as much or as little of it,”Abby said.
“Sounds good. And our bed is in our room, so this is a clothing optional spot.”
“I think so. I mean, I don’t want Kelly thinking there’s something weird or icky about bodies. And I don’t want her thinking we’re sexless buddies who just share a home.”
He smiled at her, a hint of sexual heat, tired heat, but it's there, in the look. “We’re not going to be those people.”
“But, yeah, the days of sex on the living room floor and naked breakfast in front of the fireplace are probably over.”
He very gently touches Kelly. “You better be worth that. I really liked naked breakfast.”
Abby tried not to laugh, and he smiled at her, trying to figure out how to kiss her over Kelly without moving so much as to wake her up. He settled for squeezing Abby’s shoulder.
So, if you tied him up and tortured him, Tim would admit that he wasn’t exactly excited about Kelly sleeping in their bed.
Yes, there is a good practical reason for having the kid two inches away from you if you are nursing, because that way you don’t have to get up and wake all the way up.
Fine, that's true.
But he’s not exactly enthusiastic about the idea.
Part of it’s the fact that he’s not good at sleeping with other people. The first few times he slept with Abby it took him a good three hours to fall asleep. And he’s certainly noticed from three nights in the hospital that anytime Kelly makes any noise or moves he’s just about ready to leap up and do whatever it is needs to be done. Basically, he can’t relax much past doze stage with her right next to him.
Part of it’s the fact that he wants primary snuggle position with Abby. And even though Kelly cannot roll over, there is absolutely no shot she’d be sleeping on either side of the bed. No, because if there was a massive earthquake or something, she might fall out of the bed if she was on a side (and yes, he feels that just as strongly as Abby does, and no, it’s not going away, and yes, it is awfully stupid, Virginia not precisely being a hotbed of tectonic activity, but he’s been a dad for three days and is awfully tired so cut him a little slack) so Kelly would be sleeping smack dab in the middle of the bed, between him and Abby, which means in addition to limited daytime cuddle time, all night time cuddle time would also be cut off.
Part of it is the fact that she’s smaller than the challah loaves Ziva bakes for Shabbos and he’s terrified that if he lies down in bed he might actually fall all the way asleep, roll over, and smoosh her. Yes, the Lamaze teacher said something about that basically being an urban legend, but he knows how hard he can sleep when he’s really tired, and he knows he moves around in his sleep, so it makes him nervous.
Part of it is that he’s not entirely sure he wants to share his bed with a tiny, incontinent poop machine that spits up all the time.
And part of it is that she’s got a perfectly good, hand-crafted, made-specifically-for-her-with-lots-of-love crib and it’d be nice if she got to see the inside of it more than once.
But even with all of those things being true, he’s trying to support Abby on this, because really, brand new c-section and nursing wins out over him being nervous.
Whoever came up with the phrase sleep like a baby, has never, ever slept with a baby.
First of all, babies make a lot of noise. Somehow he hadn’t really noticed that the first three nights. Tim thought he had. He thought he’d been on edge and aware of all the little chirps and snuffles and grunts, but nope, he hadn’t been. Probably because the bassinette had been on the far side of Abby’s bed and he’d been on the sofa, thus, about eight feet away, and right now he’s about ten inches away from Kelly, so he’s aware of everything.
Secondly, because he’s ten inches away, he’s very aware of the fact that she sleeps in little stretches, then fusses a tiny bit, a few chirps, a little wriggling, and goes back to sleep. But because she’s been on the outside for three days and he’s never spent this much time this close to her, every time she makes a sound or moves he jerks from dozing to full on awake.
And then, on top of it, he’s terrified that if he moves, he’ll wake her up. Yes, if the rational part of his mind was functional, it would remind him that she’s spent the last nine months inside another person who was moving all the time, and that in fact, moving is generally what lulls babies to sleep and they tend to wake up when things go still, but the rational part of his mind is currently in a sleep-deprived coma and not reporting in for duty right now.
And while it’s true that the whole nursing thing, in general, may indeed be easier if the baby is in the bed next to you, first off, Abby can’t just roll over and stick a boob in Kelly’s mouth right now. Secondly, as an incontinent poop machine, every time Kelly does, actually, wake up (as opposed to that little chirpy, wriggling, not really awake thing) she’s in need of a new diaper, so someone (in this case Tim) actually has to get all the way up, take her to the changing table, remove poop and apply a new diaper. Which from the looks of it, takes about as long as it does for Abby to go from asleep to propped up and nursing.
Then post nursing, someone (in this case Abby, because while Kelly was nursing Tim was able to drift all the way to asleep) has to stay in a somewhat upright position to burp her, and then deal with the resulting spit up (Thank you Jimmy, cloth diapers are a blessing.) and then finally, Kelly and Abby and Tim were all in one bed, asleep.
For about nineteen seconds, because as soon as she hit the mattress, Tim jerked out of asleep and back into hyper-vigilant mode.
He’s had worse nights of sleep. But never when he was this tired, let alone in his own bed.
Morning doesn’t really mean anything when you were more or less awake around the clock. Sky went dark, it got lighter.
Kelly ate at nine, midnight, three and now, again at six.
Tim had just gotten back into bed from taking her for yet another diaper change. He’s lying down, begging for sleep, but thinking he’s got to say something about this because he’s exhausted and Abby’s exhausted and both of them exhausted is a really bad plan.
So he rolls onto his side while she nurses and says, “I can’t sleep with her in the same bed. Just can’t.”
Abby’s so tired, and is looking at him like he just added an extra fifty pounds to the already much too heavy back pack she’s lugging around, and he feels like a jerk for saying it.
She doesn’t say anything to him. Doesn’t even cry, and he’s got the feeling she’s past crying, and now he’s feeling like an even bigger jerk, but the only other alternative he can think of is him sleeping on the sofa, and if he does that he really will sleep and she’ll be on her own for all of it, and that’s just not cool, at all.
“I will go get her when she cries, bring her to you, and bring her back to the crib to sleep, you won’t have to get up any more than you would if you were nursing in bed… will that work?”
Abby thought about that for a moment and nodded.
He nodded too, closed his eyes, and said, “I’m going to nap while she eats. Just poke me when it’s time for her to go back to her crib, and I’ll get it.”
“Tim, it’s morning. After she eats, we want her up a bit.”
“Then poke me then, and I’ll be up with her, we’ll make breakfast or something, and you’ll sleep.”
“Okay.”
Next
Chapter 238: Sleep
By the time Kelly finished eating, and got burped, it was nine thirty, so, bedtime. Early bedtime, but right now nothing sounds better to either Tim or Abby then a good long sleep.
So, when he finished burping her, Tim got up and started heading toward Kelly’s nursery.
“Where are you going?”
He stopped, looked at Abby, bit surprised. “Putting her in her crib?”
“I thought she’d sleep with us.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Just. I know we didn't talk about it, but getting in and out of bed is awfully hard right now, and if she’s right next to me, that’ll make nursing easier.”
“Good point.” So he turns around and lays Kelly in the middle of their bed, she’s all swaddled up, and her eyes are pretty droopy, so he’s hopeful she’ll fall asleep soon. And then stops. Normally, he’d go brush his teeth, strip off, and go to sleep. He looks back at Abby. “Is this really okay?”
“People have been sleeping with their kids since before there were beds.”
“Okay, yeah, I know that, but… They’ve got to sleep on their backs, and they can’t have any blankets or stuffed animals or pillows in there because they can get trapped in little CO2 pockets and SIDS and… And in our bed she’ll between us, and we’re a lot bigger than stuffed animals, and…” he points to their bed, “blankets, lots of blankets, and we’ve got five pillows.”
Abby thought about that while very slowly twisting around and getting out of bed, going to join him on the whole brushing teeth getting ready to sleep thing. She pointed to the bathroom, so they could talk while Kelly drifted off.
He joined her in there, half closing the door, like that would cut down on the noise some.
“I think SIDS rates are supposed to be lower for babies who co-sleep,” she said, reaching for her toothbrush.
“How does that work?”
“I have no idea. But you’ve got several computers less than a hundred feet away, so I’m sure you could go find out if you’re really curious.”
“Fine.” Brush, rinse, swish, spit.
“Are you going to?”
“Not tonight. I got online, and it took me three tries to successfully upload pictures. Brain’s not exactly firing on all cylinders today. Probably a good thing Jethro’s sticking around during the day, because I know I wasn’t aware of how fried I was until I tried to do something more complicated that mix water with formula.”
Abby laughed a little at that, then winced, laughing still really hurts, and said, “Leon’s don’t hack NCIS thing making more sense.”
“Oh, God. I wrote the damn firewall,left a path for myself, and I couldn’t get through it right now.”
She smiled and made herself not laugh at that.
He headed off, giving her some alone time in the bathroom, and began to get ready for bed, namely taking off his clothing. He makes a quick mental note that laundry needs to be done, and that since she’s the one who usually does laundry, and there’s no way in Hell she’s doing laundry tomorrow, that he needs to take care of it.
And having taken note of that, and divested himself of his clothing, another thought hits, Kelly’s in their bed. He’s naked.
Is it okay to sleep naked with your baby daughter?
“You’re glaring at the bed,” Abby said as she got out of the bathroom.
“Do I need pajamas?”
“Why would you need pajamas?”
“’Cause it’s not just you in our bed?”
“I don’t think Kelly will mind.”
He flashes her a could you miss my point more completely look. “You’re wearing pajamas.” Sort of. She’s got on soft, cotton drawstring pants (his) and one of his button downs, as well.
“I’m bleeding, my boobs are leaking, and one of the more endearing bits of just having had a baby is night sweats.”
“Good points.”
“Yeah.” She looked down at her feet, realized she still can’t see them when standing up, but she remembers how swollen they are, and how each individual toe looks like a little sausage, and how if she pokes herself in the leg, it’ll leave a dent. “All of that fluid has to come back out of me again.”
“Okay. Just… we’re pretty casual about being dressed, you know?” In that either of them is likely to be naked at any given time assuming it’s warm enough, that’s true.
“Yes.” She’s standing next to the side of the bed, and once again he gives her a hand into their bed. When he’s done, she’s sitting up, and staring at the place on the bed where her torso would go if she was lying down with something of a scowl.
“What is it?”
“Psyching myself up to try to lie down.”
“Can I help?”
“Nah. Gotta do it on my own.”
“Not today you don’t, not if you don’t want to.”
“The less I move the more it’ll hurt and the less functional the scar will be.” She planted her hands behind her, rested as much of her weight as she could onto her arms, and slowly lowered herself down, and yes, even with that it hurt. A full, pulling, burning near rip sensation that doing anything that involved her abs these days produced.
“At least let me help you get up.”
“I like that plan.” She stared up at the ceiling while saying. “That last two months I would have given my eye teeth to lay on my back. Now I really wish I could lay on my side again.” Because right now, laying on her side involves her insides feeling like they’re going to fall out, and that’s not precisely a comfortable.
“Soon.”
“Yep.” She looked away from the ceiling and back to him. “So, it’s not so much sleeping naked with her, as you’re looking for what are our we’ve got-a-kid-now naked rules?”
“Yes. You want blankets?” She nodded, and he pulled them up over her. He sat down on his side of the bed, got under the covers, made sure they were up over him, and Abby, but pushed down in the middle so they weren’t over Kelly, and rolled to face Abby, Kelly laying between them, snoozing away.
“I think as long as you’re in your own room, you can wear whatever you want and as much or as little of it,”Abby said.
“Sounds good. And our bed is in our room, so this is a clothing optional spot.”
“I think so. I mean, I don’t want Kelly thinking there’s something weird or icky about bodies. And I don’t want her thinking we’re sexless buddies who just share a home.”
He smiled at her, a hint of sexual heat, tired heat, but it's there, in the look. “We’re not going to be those people.”
“But, yeah, the days of sex on the living room floor and naked breakfast in front of the fireplace are probably over.”
He very gently touches Kelly. “You better be worth that. I really liked naked breakfast.”
Abby tried not to laugh, and he smiled at her, trying to figure out how to kiss her over Kelly without moving so much as to wake her up. He settled for squeezing Abby’s shoulder.
So, if you tied him up and tortured him, Tim would admit that he wasn’t exactly excited about Kelly sleeping in their bed.
Yes, there is a good practical reason for having the kid two inches away from you if you are nursing, because that way you don’t have to get up and wake all the way up.
Fine, that's true.
But he’s not exactly enthusiastic about the idea.
Part of it’s the fact that he’s not good at sleeping with other people. The first few times he slept with Abby it took him a good three hours to fall asleep. And he’s certainly noticed from three nights in the hospital that anytime Kelly makes any noise or moves he’s just about ready to leap up and do whatever it is needs to be done. Basically, he can’t relax much past doze stage with her right next to him.
Part of it’s the fact that he wants primary snuggle position with Abby. And even though Kelly cannot roll over, there is absolutely no shot she’d be sleeping on either side of the bed. No, because if there was a massive earthquake or something, she might fall out of the bed if she was on a side (and yes, he feels that just as strongly as Abby does, and no, it’s not going away, and yes, it is awfully stupid, Virginia not precisely being a hotbed of tectonic activity, but he’s been a dad for three days and is awfully tired so cut him a little slack) so Kelly would be sleeping smack dab in the middle of the bed, between him and Abby, which means in addition to limited daytime cuddle time, all night time cuddle time would also be cut off.
Part of it is the fact that she’s smaller than the challah loaves Ziva bakes for Shabbos and he’s terrified that if he lies down in bed he might actually fall all the way asleep, roll over, and smoosh her. Yes, the Lamaze teacher said something about that basically being an urban legend, but he knows how hard he can sleep when he’s really tired, and he knows he moves around in his sleep, so it makes him nervous.
Part of it is that he’s not entirely sure he wants to share his bed with a tiny, incontinent poop machine that spits up all the time.
And part of it is that she’s got a perfectly good, hand-crafted, made-specifically-for-her-with-lots-of-love crib and it’d be nice if she got to see the inside of it more than once.
But even with all of those things being true, he’s trying to support Abby on this, because really, brand new c-section and nursing wins out over him being nervous.
Whoever came up with the phrase sleep like a baby, has never, ever slept with a baby.
First of all, babies make a lot of noise. Somehow he hadn’t really noticed that the first three nights. Tim thought he had. He thought he’d been on edge and aware of all the little chirps and snuffles and grunts, but nope, he hadn’t been. Probably because the bassinette had been on the far side of Abby’s bed and he’d been on the sofa, thus, about eight feet away, and right now he’s about ten inches away from Kelly, so he’s aware of everything.
Secondly, because he’s ten inches away, he’s very aware of the fact that she sleeps in little stretches, then fusses a tiny bit, a few chirps, a little wriggling, and goes back to sleep. But because she’s been on the outside for three days and he’s never spent this much time this close to her, every time she makes a sound or moves he jerks from dozing to full on awake.
And then, on top of it, he’s terrified that if he moves, he’ll wake her up. Yes, if the rational part of his mind was functional, it would remind him that she’s spent the last nine months inside another person who was moving all the time, and that in fact, moving is generally what lulls babies to sleep and they tend to wake up when things go still, but the rational part of his mind is currently in a sleep-deprived coma and not reporting in for duty right now.
And while it’s true that the whole nursing thing, in general, may indeed be easier if the baby is in the bed next to you, first off, Abby can’t just roll over and stick a boob in Kelly’s mouth right now. Secondly, as an incontinent poop machine, every time Kelly does, actually, wake up (as opposed to that little chirpy, wriggling, not really awake thing) she’s in need of a new diaper, so someone (in this case Tim) actually has to get all the way up, take her to the changing table, remove poop and apply a new diaper. Which from the looks of it, takes about as long as it does for Abby to go from asleep to propped up and nursing.
Then post nursing, someone (in this case Abby, because while Kelly was nursing Tim was able to drift all the way to asleep) has to stay in a somewhat upright position to burp her, and then deal with the resulting spit up (Thank you Jimmy, cloth diapers are a blessing.) and then finally, Kelly and Abby and Tim were all in one bed, asleep.
For about nineteen seconds, because as soon as she hit the mattress, Tim jerked out of asleep and back into hyper-vigilant mode.
He’s had worse nights of sleep. But never when he was this tired, let alone in his own bed.
Morning doesn’t really mean anything when you were more or less awake around the clock. Sky went dark, it got lighter.
Kelly ate at nine, midnight, three and now, again at six.
Tim had just gotten back into bed from taking her for yet another diaper change. He’s lying down, begging for sleep, but thinking he’s got to say something about this because he’s exhausted and Abby’s exhausted and both of them exhausted is a really bad plan.
So he rolls onto his side while she nurses and says, “I can’t sleep with her in the same bed. Just can’t.”
Abby’s so tired, and is looking at him like he just added an extra fifty pounds to the already much too heavy back pack she’s lugging around, and he feels like a jerk for saying it.
She doesn’t say anything to him. Doesn’t even cry, and he’s got the feeling she’s past crying, and now he’s feeling like an even bigger jerk, but the only other alternative he can think of is him sleeping on the sofa, and if he does that he really will sleep and she’ll be on her own for all of it, and that’s just not cool, at all.
“I will go get her when she cries, bring her to you, and bring her back to the crib to sleep, you won’t have to get up any more than you would if you were nursing in bed… will that work?”
Abby thought about that for a moment and nodded.
He nodded too, closed his eyes, and said, “I’m going to nap while she eats. Just poke me when it’s time for her to go back to her crib, and I’ll get it.”
“Tim, it’s morning. After she eats, we want her up a bit.”
“Then poke me then, and I’ll be up with her, we’ll make breakfast or something, and you’ll sleep.”
“Okay.”
Next
October 19, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 237
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 237: Clearer
Abby woke up feeling, clearer, better, more attached to the real world.
She was still sore, but that unhinged, unteathered feel was gone.
She made a mental note to find out whatever pain meds she had been on and to avoid it in the future, because obviously she didn’t get along well with that one.
Then she had to deal with a new challenge. Getting up.
She’s been sitting or lying on her back since the c-section, and at first it was brilliant and novel because it’d been months since she’d been able to lay on her back, but now, after three solid days of it, she’s sick of it. But (as she found out when she tried in the hospital) lying on her side HURTS.
Getting from her back to her side, HURTS.
So, she’s on her back, and needs, wants to get up. She’s feeling pretty hungry, her breasts ache, which means Kelly is probably due to eat soon, and she can smell hamburgers and that’s making her ravenous, so she has to get out of bed.
She gingerly places her hands on the mattress, tells herself that the more she moves the more functional the scar tissue will be, and slowly, gently pushes up, and… yeah, these are better pain meds because that wasn’t nearly as bad as she was afraid it was going to be, but it really wasn’t a walk in the park either.
She’s really tempted to get a shower as she heads to the bathroom to change out her pad. She hates the smell of blood that just clings to her, but at least right now that wanting to rip her skin off revulsion seems to have passed.
But hungry is winning out over clean, so she heads downstairs, realizing she’s walking better, and maybe lying flat out wasn’t a comfortable position to get into, but it may have helped make walking easier.
When she got downstairs, Tim was setting the table, Gibbs was on the porch tending the grill, the rain had stopped, (it’s not sunny or anything, but at least there’s no rain falling.) and Kelly was in the bouncy seat at the far end of the table, snoozing.
Tim looked up at her. “You’re looking better. You feeling better?”
She nodded. “A bit. How long did I sleep?”
“Six hours.” He hugged her, from behind, very gently. Mostly he just pressed up against her and laid his chin on her shoulder. He didn’t need to be told her entire front was really sore. “We fed Kelly, but she’ll probably wake up and want to eat again soon.”
“Good, my boobs are killing me.”
He glanced at them. And they do look really swollen, and hard, and not in a good way, at all. “I’d imagine so.”
She headed outside, for a moment standing on the porch just sucking up the early evening air. Gibbs saw her and kissed her cheek.
“Feeling like you again?”
“Feeling like I might be able to pick her out of a lineup.”
“That’s good enough.”
“They smell good.”
“Good, made you two, hoped you’d be hungry.”
“Yes! I am!”
He smiled at that, flipped them over. “Five minutes.”
“Okay.” She gently lowered herself into one of the porch chairs and just rested in the warm, honeysuckle and burger scented air, listening to the hum of cicadas and the hiss of fat hitting flame.
Kelly slept through dinner.
Of course she did.
At first that was great. Time to actually eat. Talk a little. Enjoy the fact that Gibbs is really handy with a grill and beef. (He’s telling them that once upon a time he was good with chicken and ribs, too, but hasn’t done that in forever. Though it seems like Fourth of July might be at his place this year.)
And Kelly slept through it all. Blissfully out of it in the bouncy seat.
She made a little noise, fussed for a second, opened one eye, and looked around, as they were eating dessert (Abby and Gibbs had ice cream; Tim looked at it longingly and had one spoonful of Abby’s) and Abby was feeling pretty hopeful that Kelly would wake up and she could nurse, because at that point she was starting to understand why cows moo when they need to be milked, because she’s feeling like moaning, too.
But nope, that one eye closed and back to sleep she went.
And while, in general, she’s all in favor of Kelly having a long sleep, she’d A: prefer it was at night, real night, the part of the night she’d like to be sleeping, too, and B: it wasn’t right now.
Then comes the quandary. If she’s going to be awake, and she’s going to be awake, this hurts way too much to sleep, and the idea of getting into any position other than upright, where her breasts would have to move, hurts to even think about, so doing it would be insane. What, is she going to do?
She could pump and go back to sleep. That’s tempting. It might not feel good per se, but it would certainly be a relief. But she’s almost certain that if she does that, Kelly will wake up two tenths of a second after she pumps and then that’ll be another bottle feed and she doesn’t want Kelly getting too used to the idea that food comes out of a bottle.
Plus, she doesn’t want her body getting out of whack with Kelly’s eating schedule. The idea is that boobs swell up, baby takes care of it, and they match each other in a perfect supply/demand curve.
She could get that shower, but like with pumping she’s fairly certain that as soon as she’s covered in soap, Kelly will wake up screaming for food.
But eventually the kitchen was cleaned up, and Gibbs headed home. Apparently the plan is he’d be there during the day. It’s even entirely possible they had a conversation about it, planned it out, but if they did, she doesn’t remember it.
And of course, the longer she puts off any decision of what to do next, the more likely Kelly is to wake up while/right after she’s done it.
Tim’s listening to her dither. “Just get the shower. It’ll make you feel better, and it won’t kill her to wait the two minutes it would take you to get rinsed off and out of the shower.”
“What are you going to do?”
He thought about it, because, yeah, free time… Huh… “Haven’t been online in three days. Probably post some baby pictures for the family. Maybe, if she keeps sleeping, I might game a little.”
“Ohhh…”
“Yeah, living dangerously.” He winked at her.
It wasn’t until she was upstairs, in the bathroom, starting to get undressed that she realized that was her one trip up and down the stairs for the day. Anything else she wants or needs from down there either Tim’s got to bring to her, or he’s got to bring her to it.
Oh well.
She gets undressed, not looking at herself in the mirror. She doesn’t want to see herself right now. Yeah, she’s healing, but she’s also pretty sure she’s not looking incredibly different from how she looked yesterday, and she didn’t like the way yesterday looked, at all!
So, she’s not looking, not looking as much as it’s possible to not look at yourself while getting a shower, but right now her breasts do hold a sort of sick fascination for her, so she does look, and… fuck. How does that even happen in three days?
They’re the size of grapefruits and just about as hard, too. Covered in veins, which wasn’t precisely new, all of the major veins in her chest have been really visible since she got pregnant, and stretch marks, which were. She’s really, really hoping those heal up because it’s one thing to have stripes on her hips and tummy, but she’d like to be able to wear things that show some cleavage eventually. On the left one she can see… she’s not entirely sure what it is, a milk duct, maybe? Whatever it is it looks like a vein, that same sort of vascular appearance, but this one is swollen but not the blue of her blood veins.
She very gently, because she knows it’ll hurt, dabs a little foamy soap on, and her boobs responded to that by deciding that was a call for milk release, so it was squirting everywhere. Which is kind of fascinating. First of all, it’s probably a good thing Kelly’s not trying to drink this, because she’s at least eighteen inches away from the wall of the shower, and she’s squirting it, hard. Her two day old daughter might not need quite that much high pressure milk being poured straight down her throat.
She’d never really thought about how the milk comes out. Apparently the correct answer is take a water balloon, poke a whole mess of holes into one spot, then squeeze. Milk is squirting from all over the nipple in a whole lot of different directions.
She watched it, amazed, milk still flowing out, for probably a good minute, and then she started to get scared. What if Kelly woke up in the next few minutes, and her dinner was now circling the drain? Any second now, Tim could be bringing her up, hungry, and there’d be no milk for her.
This is stupid. Each breast is practically bigger than Kelly is. Both of them together have to weigh more than she does. There’s more than enough milk in there for you to let off some pressure and still feed her.
That didn’t make her less nervous, and it didn’t quell the fear, but it did feel good to hear that little, quiet, rational voice and know it hadn’t died.
Would have been nicer if it had managed to shut up the panicking baby’s-gonna-starve voice. It didn’t, couldn’t. Rational was fighting way out of it's weight class when going up against new mama hormones.
And maybe it would have been better--as she was standing there, crying, trying to figure out how to make the milk stop, to not have had rational sitting there telling her that getting upset about this is stupid and that she’s a scientist for God’s sake, so stop being stupid--if it had just shut up. But it didn’t. So she cried and felt like an idiot for it.
But she’s been a mom for two days and is drowning in frenzied hormones. And the little rational voice, in addition to telling her that freaking out about milk production is stupid, is saying that freaking out about milk production is also normal.
Eventually the milk slowed down, and her breasts felt better. Sore, they knew they’d been stretched too far, but that anything-touches-them-I’m-going-to-scream sensation was gone. Eventually she got washed up, and while the blood smell didn’t vanish, it did get beaten into submission, so that was good.
Eventually, she stopped crying, put some clean clothing on, (okay, it’s Tim’s, but it’s clean, and soft, and smells like him, so that’s good.) and tried to figure out what to do next.
Sleep.
Or not. She was eyeballing the bed (most of the time having it hip high is a good thing, but right now it’d be a lot easier if she could sit down onto it) thinking through what and how exactly she’d have to move to get into it on her own and lying down when she heard footsteps and baby cries.
“Good timing,” Abby said as Tim walked in with Kelly.
“She woke up a few minutes ago. Got her all cleaned up and thought she might like some Mom time.”
She held out her arms, took Kelly into them, and just having her right against her chest and crying set her milk to letting down. See, plenty of milk.
Tim sees her staring at the bed, holding Kelly, looking a little uncomfortable, and after a second the problem hit him. “Do you need help getting into bed?”
“Probably.”
“Not a problem.”
He took Kelly from her, and carefully set her smack dab in the middle of their bed. (Just because she’s the size of a loaf of bread, can’t roll over, and they’ve got a king-sized bed does not mean he wants her anywhere near an edge.) She squeaked at that, signaling displeasure at once again being teased by being allowed to get close enough to smell the food, and then having it cruelly taken away.
Abby stacked the pillows against the headboard. Then Tim carefully picked her up and set her on their bed. She scooted back a little, turned, winced. Twisting at the waist hurts, too.
“I can get the pillows, too.”
“No. The more I move the more functional the scar will be.”
“Okay.”
She got herself set, and picked Kelly back up again, and a little more juggling, trying to get arms and pillows and baby all comfortable, but eventually, she unbuttoned the shirt (one of the reasons she grabbed one of Tim’s, she’s awfully low on button-downs of her own) peeled off the nursing pad, accidentally squirted Kelly in the face before she got latched on, (Got a startled look out of Kelly, and a laugh out of Tim as he whipped out a cloth diaper to blot off Kelly. Abby’s not sure when they appeared, but suddenly they seem to have a ton of them, and they’re really useful.) and finally got into Hallmark card, idealized mama-nursing-baby-daddy-looking-on-everyone-happy-and-blissful-doing-exactly-what-they’re-supposed-to-do mode.
Kelly’s so tiny, and perfect, and her little mouth it wrapped around Abby’s nipple, pulling gently, and it’s not even hurting all that much this time. Her eyes are open, looking up into Abby’s, really there, with her in this moment. Her skin is so soft. She’s just in a onesie right now, so warm little arms and legs are resting against Abby’s arm and breast, and one tiny hand is curled around Tim’s finger.
Abby’s with it enough right now to really see this, really soak in the details. Tiny little lips, shaped like Tim’s, and the way Kelly’s looking up at her puts her in mind of Tim very strongly, too. (Of course, coming from Tim, she’d call that look mild confusion.) She stroked Kelly’s cheek, and nose (probably looks like her nose, but she’s not sure about that), finger slipping along her ear. It’s a perfect ear. When God designed ears, this is what He had in mind.
She studies the fingers wrapped around Tim’s. Kelly’s just so little and perfect. Each little fingernail has this miniscule crescent, shaped exactly right, and all of the little wrinkles around her knuckles are there. How can something so tiny have that level of perfect detail?
Abby pets Kelly’s hair. She knows she’s done this before, but memories of it are all sort of blurry. This time it’s sharp. Silk fine hairs, not a whole lot of them, and they’re pretty short, blondish brown, or brownish blonde, whatever that in between color is.
Tim’s free hand strokes over hers, and over Kelly’s head, and he leans down to kiss her head. “Looks like we’re gonna have to wait a while before we can put all those little bows we got in her hair.” Then he sat up a little, and kissed Abby, gently.
He pulled back, looking her in the eye, palm of his hand stroking over her cheek. “I love you so much, Abby. Love her so much. Thank you. Sarah was asking me how I knew you were the one, and I was telling her that for a long time it didn’t matter if you were the one because we didn’t want the same things… and just… Thank you. Thank you for deciding to do this with me. Thank you for becoming my ‘the one.’”
And for what felt like the fiftieth time that day, Abby burst into tears again. Tim held her close. And Kelly continued to nurse.
Next
Chapter 237: Clearer
Abby woke up feeling, clearer, better, more attached to the real world.
She was still sore, but that unhinged, unteathered feel was gone.
She made a mental note to find out whatever pain meds she had been on and to avoid it in the future, because obviously she didn’t get along well with that one.
Then she had to deal with a new challenge. Getting up.
She’s been sitting or lying on her back since the c-section, and at first it was brilliant and novel because it’d been months since she’d been able to lay on her back, but now, after three solid days of it, she’s sick of it. But (as she found out when she tried in the hospital) lying on her side HURTS.
Getting from her back to her side, HURTS.
So, she’s on her back, and needs, wants to get up. She’s feeling pretty hungry, her breasts ache, which means Kelly is probably due to eat soon, and she can smell hamburgers and that’s making her ravenous, so she has to get out of bed.
She gingerly places her hands on the mattress, tells herself that the more she moves the more functional the scar tissue will be, and slowly, gently pushes up, and… yeah, these are better pain meds because that wasn’t nearly as bad as she was afraid it was going to be, but it really wasn’t a walk in the park either.
She’s really tempted to get a shower as she heads to the bathroom to change out her pad. She hates the smell of blood that just clings to her, but at least right now that wanting to rip her skin off revulsion seems to have passed.
But hungry is winning out over clean, so she heads downstairs, realizing she’s walking better, and maybe lying flat out wasn’t a comfortable position to get into, but it may have helped make walking easier.
When she got downstairs, Tim was setting the table, Gibbs was on the porch tending the grill, the rain had stopped, (it’s not sunny or anything, but at least there’s no rain falling.) and Kelly was in the bouncy seat at the far end of the table, snoozing.
Tim looked up at her. “You’re looking better. You feeling better?”
She nodded. “A bit. How long did I sleep?”
“Six hours.” He hugged her, from behind, very gently. Mostly he just pressed up against her and laid his chin on her shoulder. He didn’t need to be told her entire front was really sore. “We fed Kelly, but she’ll probably wake up and want to eat again soon.”
“Good, my boobs are killing me.”
He glanced at them. And they do look really swollen, and hard, and not in a good way, at all. “I’d imagine so.”
She headed outside, for a moment standing on the porch just sucking up the early evening air. Gibbs saw her and kissed her cheek.
“Feeling like you again?”
“Feeling like I might be able to pick her out of a lineup.”
“That’s good enough.”
“They smell good.”
“Good, made you two, hoped you’d be hungry.”
“Yes! I am!”
He smiled at that, flipped them over. “Five minutes.”
“Okay.” She gently lowered herself into one of the porch chairs and just rested in the warm, honeysuckle and burger scented air, listening to the hum of cicadas and the hiss of fat hitting flame.
Kelly slept through dinner.
Of course she did.
At first that was great. Time to actually eat. Talk a little. Enjoy the fact that Gibbs is really handy with a grill and beef. (He’s telling them that once upon a time he was good with chicken and ribs, too, but hasn’t done that in forever. Though it seems like Fourth of July might be at his place this year.)
And Kelly slept through it all. Blissfully out of it in the bouncy seat.
She made a little noise, fussed for a second, opened one eye, and looked around, as they were eating dessert (Abby and Gibbs had ice cream; Tim looked at it longingly and had one spoonful of Abby’s) and Abby was feeling pretty hopeful that Kelly would wake up and she could nurse, because at that point she was starting to understand why cows moo when they need to be milked, because she’s feeling like moaning, too.
But nope, that one eye closed and back to sleep she went.
And while, in general, she’s all in favor of Kelly having a long sleep, she’d A: prefer it was at night, real night, the part of the night she’d like to be sleeping, too, and B: it wasn’t right now.
Then comes the quandary. If she’s going to be awake, and she’s going to be awake, this hurts way too much to sleep, and the idea of getting into any position other than upright, where her breasts would have to move, hurts to even think about, so doing it would be insane. What, is she going to do?
She could pump and go back to sleep. That’s tempting. It might not feel good per se, but it would certainly be a relief. But she’s almost certain that if she does that, Kelly will wake up two tenths of a second after she pumps and then that’ll be another bottle feed and she doesn’t want Kelly getting too used to the idea that food comes out of a bottle.
Plus, she doesn’t want her body getting out of whack with Kelly’s eating schedule. The idea is that boobs swell up, baby takes care of it, and they match each other in a perfect supply/demand curve.
She could get that shower, but like with pumping she’s fairly certain that as soon as she’s covered in soap, Kelly will wake up screaming for food.
But eventually the kitchen was cleaned up, and Gibbs headed home. Apparently the plan is he’d be there during the day. It’s even entirely possible they had a conversation about it, planned it out, but if they did, she doesn’t remember it.
And of course, the longer she puts off any decision of what to do next, the more likely Kelly is to wake up while/right after she’s done it.
Tim’s listening to her dither. “Just get the shower. It’ll make you feel better, and it won’t kill her to wait the two minutes it would take you to get rinsed off and out of the shower.”
“What are you going to do?”
He thought about it, because, yeah, free time… Huh… “Haven’t been online in three days. Probably post some baby pictures for the family. Maybe, if she keeps sleeping, I might game a little.”
“Ohhh…”
“Yeah, living dangerously.” He winked at her.
It wasn’t until she was upstairs, in the bathroom, starting to get undressed that she realized that was her one trip up and down the stairs for the day. Anything else she wants or needs from down there either Tim’s got to bring to her, or he’s got to bring her to it.
Oh well.
She gets undressed, not looking at herself in the mirror. She doesn’t want to see herself right now. Yeah, she’s healing, but she’s also pretty sure she’s not looking incredibly different from how she looked yesterday, and she didn’t like the way yesterday looked, at all!
So, she’s not looking, not looking as much as it’s possible to not look at yourself while getting a shower, but right now her breasts do hold a sort of sick fascination for her, so she does look, and… fuck. How does that even happen in three days?
They’re the size of grapefruits and just about as hard, too. Covered in veins, which wasn’t precisely new, all of the major veins in her chest have been really visible since she got pregnant, and stretch marks, which were. She’s really, really hoping those heal up because it’s one thing to have stripes on her hips and tummy, but she’d like to be able to wear things that show some cleavage eventually. On the left one she can see… she’s not entirely sure what it is, a milk duct, maybe? Whatever it is it looks like a vein, that same sort of vascular appearance, but this one is swollen but not the blue of her blood veins.
She very gently, because she knows it’ll hurt, dabs a little foamy soap on, and her boobs responded to that by deciding that was a call for milk release, so it was squirting everywhere. Which is kind of fascinating. First of all, it’s probably a good thing Kelly’s not trying to drink this, because she’s at least eighteen inches away from the wall of the shower, and she’s squirting it, hard. Her two day old daughter might not need quite that much high pressure milk being poured straight down her throat.
She’d never really thought about how the milk comes out. Apparently the correct answer is take a water balloon, poke a whole mess of holes into one spot, then squeeze. Milk is squirting from all over the nipple in a whole lot of different directions.
She watched it, amazed, milk still flowing out, for probably a good minute, and then she started to get scared. What if Kelly woke up in the next few minutes, and her dinner was now circling the drain? Any second now, Tim could be bringing her up, hungry, and there’d be no milk for her.
This is stupid. Each breast is practically bigger than Kelly is. Both of them together have to weigh more than she does. There’s more than enough milk in there for you to let off some pressure and still feed her.
That didn’t make her less nervous, and it didn’t quell the fear, but it did feel good to hear that little, quiet, rational voice and know it hadn’t died.
Would have been nicer if it had managed to shut up the panicking baby’s-gonna-starve voice. It didn’t, couldn’t. Rational was fighting way out of it's weight class when going up against new mama hormones.
And maybe it would have been better--as she was standing there, crying, trying to figure out how to make the milk stop, to not have had rational sitting there telling her that getting upset about this is stupid and that she’s a scientist for God’s sake, so stop being stupid--if it had just shut up. But it didn’t. So she cried and felt like an idiot for it.
But she’s been a mom for two days and is drowning in frenzied hormones. And the little rational voice, in addition to telling her that freaking out about milk production is stupid, is saying that freaking out about milk production is also normal.
Eventually the milk slowed down, and her breasts felt better. Sore, they knew they’d been stretched too far, but that anything-touches-them-I’m-going-to-scream sensation was gone. Eventually she got washed up, and while the blood smell didn’t vanish, it did get beaten into submission, so that was good.
Eventually, she stopped crying, put some clean clothing on, (okay, it’s Tim’s, but it’s clean, and soft, and smells like him, so that’s good.) and tried to figure out what to do next.
Sleep.
Or not. She was eyeballing the bed (most of the time having it hip high is a good thing, but right now it’d be a lot easier if she could sit down onto it) thinking through what and how exactly she’d have to move to get into it on her own and lying down when she heard footsteps and baby cries.
“Good timing,” Abby said as Tim walked in with Kelly.
“She woke up a few minutes ago. Got her all cleaned up and thought she might like some Mom time.”
She held out her arms, took Kelly into them, and just having her right against her chest and crying set her milk to letting down. See, plenty of milk.
Tim sees her staring at the bed, holding Kelly, looking a little uncomfortable, and after a second the problem hit him. “Do you need help getting into bed?”
“Probably.”
“Not a problem.”
He took Kelly from her, and carefully set her smack dab in the middle of their bed. (Just because she’s the size of a loaf of bread, can’t roll over, and they’ve got a king-sized bed does not mean he wants her anywhere near an edge.) She squeaked at that, signaling displeasure at once again being teased by being allowed to get close enough to smell the food, and then having it cruelly taken away.
Abby stacked the pillows against the headboard. Then Tim carefully picked her up and set her on their bed. She scooted back a little, turned, winced. Twisting at the waist hurts, too.
“I can get the pillows, too.”
“No. The more I move the more functional the scar will be.”
“Okay.”
She got herself set, and picked Kelly back up again, and a little more juggling, trying to get arms and pillows and baby all comfortable, but eventually, she unbuttoned the shirt (one of the reasons she grabbed one of Tim’s, she’s awfully low on button-downs of her own) peeled off the nursing pad, accidentally squirted Kelly in the face before she got latched on, (Got a startled look out of Kelly, and a laugh out of Tim as he whipped out a cloth diaper to blot off Kelly. Abby’s not sure when they appeared, but suddenly they seem to have a ton of them, and they’re really useful.) and finally got into Hallmark card, idealized mama-nursing-baby-daddy-looking-on-everyone-happy-and-blissful-doing-exactly-what-they’re-supposed-to-do mode.
Kelly’s so tiny, and perfect, and her little mouth it wrapped around Abby’s nipple, pulling gently, and it’s not even hurting all that much this time. Her eyes are open, looking up into Abby’s, really there, with her in this moment. Her skin is so soft. She’s just in a onesie right now, so warm little arms and legs are resting against Abby’s arm and breast, and one tiny hand is curled around Tim’s finger.
Abby’s with it enough right now to really see this, really soak in the details. Tiny little lips, shaped like Tim’s, and the way Kelly’s looking up at her puts her in mind of Tim very strongly, too. (Of course, coming from Tim, she’d call that look mild confusion.) She stroked Kelly’s cheek, and nose (probably looks like her nose, but she’s not sure about that), finger slipping along her ear. It’s a perfect ear. When God designed ears, this is what He had in mind.
She studies the fingers wrapped around Tim’s. Kelly’s just so little and perfect. Each little fingernail has this miniscule crescent, shaped exactly right, and all of the little wrinkles around her knuckles are there. How can something so tiny have that level of perfect detail?
Abby pets Kelly’s hair. She knows she’s done this before, but memories of it are all sort of blurry. This time it’s sharp. Silk fine hairs, not a whole lot of them, and they’re pretty short, blondish brown, or brownish blonde, whatever that in between color is.
Tim’s free hand strokes over hers, and over Kelly’s head, and he leans down to kiss her head. “Looks like we’re gonna have to wait a while before we can put all those little bows we got in her hair.” Then he sat up a little, and kissed Abby, gently.
He pulled back, looking her in the eye, palm of his hand stroking over her cheek. “I love you so much, Abby. Love her so much. Thank you. Sarah was asking me how I knew you were the one, and I was telling her that for a long time it didn’t matter if you were the one because we didn’t want the same things… and just… Thank you. Thank you for deciding to do this with me. Thank you for becoming my ‘the one.’”
And for what felt like the fiftieth time that day, Abby burst into tears again. Tim held her close. And Kelly continued to nurse.
Next
October 17, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 236
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 236: Father, Son, Granddaughter
"Okay, Honey, I know it's not Mom's, but she's really tired, so let's try this and see if it'll do."
Gibbs was holding Kelly as he made up the bottle. She didn't appear to be too thrilled with either of them right now. At two days old she knows where the food comes from, and while both of these two might be good for napping on, they are not the provider of food.
But, since the provider of food is still dead asleep and both of her guys think she needs the rest, they're on mealtime for Kelly.
Not too bad.He got settled down at one of the kitchen chairs, Kelly in his arms, bottle in hand, nipple in mouth, and she was sucking away, expression on her face indicating that this was not what she was expecting, but it's not entirely unwelcome either.
Honestly, it's really nice. He's liking this, and can see doing it again, actually looking forward to it.
"What are you doing!" Abby shrieked at him.
He was so startled by that he almost dropped Kelly. He did drop the bottle. Which set off Kelly, who had been appreciating the food, and began to cry as a result of it suddenly vanishing.
"Feeding her." The look on Abby's face is terrifying. She is red hot furious at him right now. "You're so tired… I just… wanted you to get some more sleep."
Rug yanked out from under his feet."You can't do that! It's bad for her! She has to breastfeed!" Abby's trying to take Kelly away from him, crying, saying something about bonding and allergies, and Tim's feeling like the rug just got yanked out from under his feet.
It takes him a second to get his bearings back. "Okay, okay. Go, sit down, get yourself settled, and I'll bring her over to you." He's flashing Gibbs a help me look, but Gibbs is also looking like he just got the rug yanked out from under him, too. Gibbs just shakes his head a little, acknowledging that backfired spectacularly.
Tim flashes back a, yeah, I guessed that, look.
Abby's sitting on the sofa, sobbing, breast out, rambling about how if you bottle feed, even just once, that some babies never go back to breastfeeding and how bad formula is for them and something about micronutrients and how formula feeding means Kelly won't get the benefit of Abby's immune system. Basically it's a huge, hysterical, teary, snotty fit cumulating in trust issues and how could either of them possibly think it was all right to just decide something that immense without even talking to her about it.
Tim very warily approaches the sofa with Kelly, who is also crying, and gently hands her to Abby.
And Kelly, at least, calmed back down again when she got a hold of a nipple and some milk, but Abby's still on a massive crying jag.
He tries to sit next to her, wrap his arm around her, and she flinched away from him, probably still yelling at him, but she lost pretty much all coherence a few paragraphs ago.
I am very sorry...So he knelt on the floor in front of her, made sure to wait until she took a breath, and said, slowly, and as calmly as he can manage, "I am very sorry. I didn't know it was that big of a deal. I just wanted you to get some sleep. I will not try to feed her again without talking to you about it first."
That barely made a dent in the crying jag, but he sat there, hands on her knees, looking up at her with an earnest expression, trying to hold his own calm, which very much wants to run away and break into a thousand crying pieces as well, because he's awfully tired and emotional right now too, but that won't help anything, but maybe his touch and just being there can help her find her own calm. Eventually she did calm down a bit, and unfortunately calming down meant she started to see what she had done, and that started another crying jag, this time embarrassed and angry at herself for going off the deep end.
But at least with the second crying jag he could sit next to her, rub her back, and interject occasional comforting sounds along the lines of 'it's okay' and 'this is normal' and 'you're on a lot of drugs.'
The main thrust of the second jag was that, no, he did not need to seek permission to feed his own child. And that it was totally irrational for her to expect that. And that she was a horrible person for even suggesting it, let alone getting mad about it. (He tried to curb that one with extremely limited success.)
When Kelly got done, he was very relieved to hand her over to Gibbs and ask, "What was the last thing you ate?"
Her eyes are bright red, face puffy from crying, and her voice rough. "I don't know."
"Okay, let's deal with that first. Jethro made you a sandwich, and look at all the goodies Jimmy left for you."
"I'm not hungry."
"You've got to eat, baby. Anything you want, at all, I'll get it for you."
"I don't want anything. Just want to sleep. I'm so tired."
"Soon. Just, eat the sandwich, okay. Sandwich, more meds."
"Don't want them, they're making me crazy."
"New meds, not the same stuff you were taking before. This one's an opiate, like morphine."
She just gave up and slumped deeper into the sofa.
"Just a little food, and I'll take you upstairs, you can lay all the way down, and sleep as long as you want."
That got a tiny nod, and she reached for the sandwich.
Tim headed into the kitchen to get a dose of Percocet. Gibbs was walking Kelly around, working on getting a burp out of her.
"Storm over?"
"I don't know." He grabbed a glass and filled it with water and headed back out to the living room. Abby had taken a few bites of the sandwich and was lying against the sofa with her eyes closed.
"Come on, baby, just a bit more food."
She opened her eyes and took another bite, then took the pills and water from him, swallowing them down.
He sat next to her while she silently finished the sandwich. When she did, he asked, "Upstairs?"
She nodded again. He picked her up, carefully, very gently and slowly, and she still winced. "Better walking?"
That got a headshake, so he took her up to their bedroom and laid her on their bed. That got another wince, and it took him a moment but he figured out the problem might be that she hasn't lain flat since… hell, since she was six months pregnant with Kelly, and right now especially that's probably more stretch on her abs than feels good.
"You want pillows to prop up?"
Headshake. The not talking thing is really unnerving to him.
"Can I get you anything?"
Another headshake.
He's flailing around for a question that doesn't have a yes or no answer, but by the time he came up with one her eyes were closed again and she was looking asleep.
So he headed back downstairs.
"That can't be normal! Can it?"
Gibbs shrugged. "Shannon never did that." Tim's getting out his phone. "You got her for a few more minutes?"
"I've got her. Calling Jimmy?"
"Breena."
"Good plan."
He got Breena on the third ring. "Hey, what's up?"
So he explained and wrapped up with, "Is this normal?"
"If it lasts more than a few hours a day or more than a few weeks, no, it's not. Otherwise, welcome to baby blues."
Tim's eyes went wide. "This is baby blues?"
"Yeah, it sounds so cute, right? Oh, you've got baby blues, you'll cry a little and mope. Try full on raving psycho for a little bits of time every day for about two weeks."
"Shit."
"Eloquently said. The first two weeks I was generally okay when anyone else was around, and more or less sobbed uncontrollably during all the night feeds."
Tim sighs.
"It will get better. And if it doesn't they've got medication for it."
"Wonderful. Okay, what are danger signs of not okay?"
"Not sleeping. Crying more than like three hours a day."
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Three hours a day? Three hours a day of this is normal? I really need to read that pamphlet they gave us."
"Yeah, you do."
"Okay, what else do I look out for?"
"If she wants to hurt Kelly or goes the opposite direction and won't let you or anyone else touch her, thinking you're going to hurt her."
"She's not talking."
Breena thought about that. "I'd keep an eye on that."
"And do what with it?"
"Go with her to her post-partum check-ups and make sure the Doc knows about it. When she's a little more healed up, make sure she gets out of the house and some baby free time every day. Right now there's not much you can do, she's exhausted and her body's going bonkers. Just turn the other cheek and deal."
"I can do that."
"Good. She flips out too much, give me a call, and I'll be there. Some things she needs to talk to another mom about."
"Okay."
"What's she doing now?"
"Sleeping."
"Probably the best thing for her."
When Tim got off the phone, Jethro was looking at him expectantly. "Might be baby blues, might be post-partum depression. Won't know for sure for a while. Got to read up."
Gibbs shook his head. "Not right this second. I've got Kelly. I'll put her down. You go get a nap. Part of why I'm here is so that you can sleep during the day, and then help Abby at night. So, go, sleep. I've got this."
"I should…"
"Go to sleep. You'll have plenty of time to research tonight when you're walking her around trying to coax a burp out of her. Go to sleep."
"Okay."
He woke up to the tiny, cat meow cry of a newborn, took a second to figure out where and when he is, and then hopped up fast, hoping to get her before Abby woke up.
It looked like his mission was successful, he looked back as he headed out of their room and Abby was still asleep.
Two seconds later, he was picking Kelly out of her crib. "So, Pop got you to sleep in here, huh? He made it for you, you know that?" Tim said as he laid her on her back on the changing table. He set about unswaddling and unsnapping her onesie, getting onto diaper maintenance. "I helped, a little, with it. When your eyes can focus more than five inches away, you'll see your mom drew a beautiful picture of our family on the back of it. I didn't help with that." He got her out of the poopy diaper and began the clean-up. It's really not that bad, especially compared to handling one of Molly's diapers. Of course, these days, the biggest challenge with Molly is getting her to stay still long enough to get her clean. (He's seen both Jimmy and Breena chasing a half-naked Molly through the house, clean diaper and wipes in hand.) He's not having that problem with Kelly, she's just laying on her back, kicking around a bit, looking pretty alert and peaceful.
He got her cleaned up, in a fresh diaper, and buttoned back into the onesie. (For her first day home, she had the one that Jimmy and Breena gave them the day after their wedding. The first of the baby presents.)
They usually, if at this point in time anything involving Kelly can said to be usual, feed her right after diaper change, but she's pretty calm, and he hasn't actually had a chance to sit with her in the rocking chair, yet. So he settles down, his baby on his chest, rocking gently, and of course the chair has great action, smooth and easy, and it's very comfortable.
Sitting there, he's feeling very connected to Gibbs, who he just knows is behind him, watching, and this sense of family, and maybe for his line it's not unbroken the way it's supposed to be, but it's his, and it's real, and with Kelly in his hands, breathing gently against his neck, and Gibbs behind him, watching, it stretches through his life to time before him and time after.
"Doing it right?"
He feels the nod, unable to see or hear it, and a second later Gibbs's hand is on his shoulder. Tim squeezes it for a second, then wipes his eyes, and stands up. "Probably a good idea to feed her before she starts crying."
"That's always a good idea."
This time feeding her went without a hitch, and shortly after Jethro sent Tim up for another nap, and since the idea of sleeping during the day when Jethro was there, and then being there for Abby at night struck him as a good plan, he got the nap.
The next time he woke up he didn't hear anything. For a minute he just lay there enjoying not feeling horrendously tired and the fact that he didn't need to leap up and do anything right this second.
But after a few seconds of that, his inborn Dad skills perked up and decided he needed to investigate. Gibbs is down there. Everything is probably fine. But he can't just trust that. So, after checking Abby, seeing she was still asleep, and this time looking fairly peaceful, like she might have dropped out of exhausted sleep and into restful sleep. He got up and headed to the nursery.
No Kelly.
Downstairs.
He found Gibbs on the sofa, stretched out, bare feet, t-shirt and jeans, his usual off work summertime outfit, gently humming something as he stroked Kelly's back while she slept.
He remembered vaguely that he'd had some sort of father's day present planned for Gibbs. (Pictures were put together, wrapped, and delivered to Tony and Ziva, who were not expecting to take a brand new baby home on Father's Day and thus could be trusted to deliver the present to Gibbs without forgetting about it.) And that, if there was time, he wanted to add a shot of Gibbs with the baby girls to it. So he backtracked a few steps, grabbed his phone, and shot Gibbs cuddling Kelly.
Gibbs looked up at him as he did that.
"Hope that's not a' take a picture and die, McGee' moment."
Gibbs shook his head as Tim headed to sit on the end of the sofa. "Want a copy of it."
"You'll get one."
"Good." Gibbs kissed the top of her head. "Shouldn't let her get to used to sleeping on people."
"It's okay."
"You might not think that when the only place she wants to sleep is your chest and you want to do something besides be a pillow."
Tim smiles. "I'll call you. You're good for pillow duty."
Gibbs laughed at that, then checked the clock. "Should get started on dinner."
"I got it; you be a pillow."
Gibbs shook his head and slowly started up. "I'll go back to work soon enough. Let me take care of you guys while I can."
And like speaking of the devil is supposed to bring him near, Gibbs's phone began to ring. So Tim took Kelly, and Gibbs got the phone call. He can tell by Gibbs' posture that it's a work call, likely Tony. He hears the traditional Gibbs on the phone routine of "Yes… Uh huh... Ya think? Go do it..."
Gibbs tucked the phone back into his pocket, and headed into Tim's kitchen. "How fast does your grill heat up?"
"For burgers, about ten minutes."
Gibbs headed out and turned it on, and was back a minute later. "Nice grill."
"Jimmy and Breena got it for us."
Kelly shifted for a few seconds, stretching, and both of them went silent and still, not wanting to wake her up, but she seemed to settle deeper into sleep, so Gibbs got the ground beef, and Tim sat at the table, holding her against his chest, enjoying this.
"Jethro, don't you need to be at work?"
Gibbs looked up from mixing hamburger with A1 sauce, salt, and pepper. "Don't want the help?"
"God! No! Love the help, very happy to have you here, just… It's an active case. I've never seen you take off in the middle of an active case before."
Gibbs shrugs. The reason behind it is… well, kind of touchy-feely, not the sort of thing he's comfortable really saying, but this is Tim, and he does better with words than looks, so…
"It's Tony's team, Tim. I'm just making sure the transition goes smooth. He doesn't need me hanging around, too much..." That's part of it, but there's more. "There's got to be life after NCIS. Can't just lay on a beach drinking cervezas."
"Like Mike."
"Mike had more irons in the fire than anyone knew about, even me. Yeah, there was a lot of booze and senoritas, but he wasn't just lying around."
"Okay."
"More to life means having a life outside of work. This," and Gibbs look filled in that he means this family, "is a lot of it. It'll be the anchor. And there'll be other stuff, too. Has to. Don't want you and Abby and Tony and Ziva and Jimmy and Breena getting sick of me. Don't want to be that guy who just hangs on."
"You're not."
Getting to where you
need to go."Try that again when I've been retired for a year." He shakes his head, he's getting close to it, but not getting to the heart of it. He can feel the presence of Shannon and his Kelly very strongly, and closes his eyes, because seeing them here would be disconcerting
"Jethro?" Tim sounds concerned.
He opens his eyes, goes back to working on the hamburger patties. "I was supposed to be a dad. Supposed to be a granddad." He looks at the ring Tim got him to put back on. The ring he thinks he's getting closer to ready to take off again. "I'm getting back to being the man I was supposed to be. This, being here, for you and Abby and for Tony and Ziva when they have their babies, providing back up support for Ducky with Jimmy and Breena's, this is being the man I was meant to be."
Tim smiled at that. Over Tim's shoulder he catches a quick glimpse of Shannon smiling at him, too.
Next
A/N: So, those of you who are serious Sean Murray fans are probably at least vaguely aware of the fact that there are pics of him with his kids floating around out there. Like the one of him in a rocking chair holding his baby daughter. So, why have I not posted that, and why am I not going to post pictures like them? Because he's gone online and flat out said those pictures were stolen, and while it's true he's a public person, his kids aren't, so please respect their privacy and don't post those shots. So, while I will search high and low for shots I can use to illustrate Shards, none of those are going into this story line.
Chapter 236: Father, Son, Granddaughter
"Okay, Honey, I know it's not Mom's, but she's really tired, so let's try this and see if it'll do."
Gibbs was holding Kelly as he made up the bottle. She didn't appear to be too thrilled with either of them right now. At two days old she knows where the food comes from, and while both of these two might be good for napping on, they are not the provider of food.
But, since the provider of food is still dead asleep and both of her guys think she needs the rest, they're on mealtime for Kelly.
Not too bad.He got settled down at one of the kitchen chairs, Kelly in his arms, bottle in hand, nipple in mouth, and she was sucking away, expression on her face indicating that this was not what she was expecting, but it's not entirely unwelcome either.Honestly, it's really nice. He's liking this, and can see doing it again, actually looking forward to it.
"What are you doing!" Abby shrieked at him.
He was so startled by that he almost dropped Kelly. He did drop the bottle. Which set off Kelly, who had been appreciating the food, and began to cry as a result of it suddenly vanishing.
"Feeding her." The look on Abby's face is terrifying. She is red hot furious at him right now. "You're so tired… I just… wanted you to get some more sleep."
Rug yanked out from under his feet."You can't do that! It's bad for her! She has to breastfeed!" Abby's trying to take Kelly away from him, crying, saying something about bonding and allergies, and Tim's feeling like the rug just got yanked out from under his feet.It takes him a second to get his bearings back. "Okay, okay. Go, sit down, get yourself settled, and I'll bring her over to you." He's flashing Gibbs a help me look, but Gibbs is also looking like he just got the rug yanked out from under him, too. Gibbs just shakes his head a little, acknowledging that backfired spectacularly.
Tim flashes back a, yeah, I guessed that, look.
Abby's sitting on the sofa, sobbing, breast out, rambling about how if you bottle feed, even just once, that some babies never go back to breastfeeding and how bad formula is for them and something about micronutrients and how formula feeding means Kelly won't get the benefit of Abby's immune system. Basically it's a huge, hysterical, teary, snotty fit cumulating in trust issues and how could either of them possibly think it was all right to just decide something that immense without even talking to her about it.
Tim very warily approaches the sofa with Kelly, who is also crying, and gently hands her to Abby.
And Kelly, at least, calmed back down again when she got a hold of a nipple and some milk, but Abby's still on a massive crying jag.
He tries to sit next to her, wrap his arm around her, and she flinched away from him, probably still yelling at him, but she lost pretty much all coherence a few paragraphs ago.
I am very sorry...So he knelt on the floor in front of her, made sure to wait until she took a breath, and said, slowly, and as calmly as he can manage, "I am very sorry. I didn't know it was that big of a deal. I just wanted you to get some sleep. I will not try to feed her again without talking to you about it first."That barely made a dent in the crying jag, but he sat there, hands on her knees, looking up at her with an earnest expression, trying to hold his own calm, which very much wants to run away and break into a thousand crying pieces as well, because he's awfully tired and emotional right now too, but that won't help anything, but maybe his touch and just being there can help her find her own calm. Eventually she did calm down a bit, and unfortunately calming down meant she started to see what she had done, and that started another crying jag, this time embarrassed and angry at herself for going off the deep end.
But at least with the second crying jag he could sit next to her, rub her back, and interject occasional comforting sounds along the lines of 'it's okay' and 'this is normal' and 'you're on a lot of drugs.'
The main thrust of the second jag was that, no, he did not need to seek permission to feed his own child. And that it was totally irrational for her to expect that. And that she was a horrible person for even suggesting it, let alone getting mad about it. (He tried to curb that one with extremely limited success.)
When Kelly got done, he was very relieved to hand her over to Gibbs and ask, "What was the last thing you ate?"
Her eyes are bright red, face puffy from crying, and her voice rough. "I don't know."
"Okay, let's deal with that first. Jethro made you a sandwich, and look at all the goodies Jimmy left for you."
"I'm not hungry."
"You've got to eat, baby. Anything you want, at all, I'll get it for you."
"I don't want anything. Just want to sleep. I'm so tired."
"Soon. Just, eat the sandwich, okay. Sandwich, more meds."
"Don't want them, they're making me crazy."
"New meds, not the same stuff you were taking before. This one's an opiate, like morphine."
She just gave up and slumped deeper into the sofa.
"Just a little food, and I'll take you upstairs, you can lay all the way down, and sleep as long as you want."
That got a tiny nod, and she reached for the sandwich.
Tim headed into the kitchen to get a dose of Percocet. Gibbs was walking Kelly around, working on getting a burp out of her.
"Storm over?"
"I don't know." He grabbed a glass and filled it with water and headed back out to the living room. Abby had taken a few bites of the sandwich and was lying against the sofa with her eyes closed.
"Come on, baby, just a bit more food."
She opened her eyes and took another bite, then took the pills and water from him, swallowing them down.
He sat next to her while she silently finished the sandwich. When she did, he asked, "Upstairs?"
She nodded again. He picked her up, carefully, very gently and slowly, and she still winced. "Better walking?"
That got a headshake, so he took her up to their bedroom and laid her on their bed. That got another wince, and it took him a moment but he figured out the problem might be that she hasn't lain flat since… hell, since she was six months pregnant with Kelly, and right now especially that's probably more stretch on her abs than feels good.
"You want pillows to prop up?"
Headshake. The not talking thing is really unnerving to him.
"Can I get you anything?"
Another headshake.
He's flailing around for a question that doesn't have a yes or no answer, but by the time he came up with one her eyes were closed again and she was looking asleep.
So he headed back downstairs.
"That can't be normal! Can it?"
Gibbs shrugged. "Shannon never did that." Tim's getting out his phone. "You got her for a few more minutes?"
"I've got her. Calling Jimmy?"
"Breena."
"Good plan."
He got Breena on the third ring. "Hey, what's up?"
So he explained and wrapped up with, "Is this normal?"
"If it lasts more than a few hours a day or more than a few weeks, no, it's not. Otherwise, welcome to baby blues."
Tim's eyes went wide. "This is baby blues?"
"Yeah, it sounds so cute, right? Oh, you've got baby blues, you'll cry a little and mope. Try full on raving psycho for a little bits of time every day for about two weeks."
"Shit."
"Eloquently said. The first two weeks I was generally okay when anyone else was around, and more or less sobbed uncontrollably during all the night feeds."
Tim sighs.
"It will get better. And if it doesn't they've got medication for it."
"Wonderful. Okay, what are danger signs of not okay?"
"Not sleeping. Crying more than like three hours a day."
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Three hours a day? Three hours a day of this is normal? I really need to read that pamphlet they gave us."
"Yeah, you do."
"Okay, what else do I look out for?"
"If she wants to hurt Kelly or goes the opposite direction and won't let you or anyone else touch her, thinking you're going to hurt her."
"She's not talking."
Breena thought about that. "I'd keep an eye on that."
"And do what with it?"
"Go with her to her post-partum check-ups and make sure the Doc knows about it. When she's a little more healed up, make sure she gets out of the house and some baby free time every day. Right now there's not much you can do, she's exhausted and her body's going bonkers. Just turn the other cheek and deal."
"I can do that."
"Good. She flips out too much, give me a call, and I'll be there. Some things she needs to talk to another mom about."
"Okay."
"What's she doing now?"
"Sleeping."
"Probably the best thing for her."
When Tim got off the phone, Jethro was looking at him expectantly. "Might be baby blues, might be post-partum depression. Won't know for sure for a while. Got to read up."
Gibbs shook his head. "Not right this second. I've got Kelly. I'll put her down. You go get a nap. Part of why I'm here is so that you can sleep during the day, and then help Abby at night. So, go, sleep. I've got this."
"I should…"
"Go to sleep. You'll have plenty of time to research tonight when you're walking her around trying to coax a burp out of her. Go to sleep."
"Okay."
He woke up to the tiny, cat meow cry of a newborn, took a second to figure out where and when he is, and then hopped up fast, hoping to get her before Abby woke up.
It looked like his mission was successful, he looked back as he headed out of their room and Abby was still asleep.
Two seconds later, he was picking Kelly out of her crib. "So, Pop got you to sleep in here, huh? He made it for you, you know that?" Tim said as he laid her on her back on the changing table. He set about unswaddling and unsnapping her onesie, getting onto diaper maintenance. "I helped, a little, with it. When your eyes can focus more than five inches away, you'll see your mom drew a beautiful picture of our family on the back of it. I didn't help with that." He got her out of the poopy diaper and began the clean-up. It's really not that bad, especially compared to handling one of Molly's diapers. Of course, these days, the biggest challenge with Molly is getting her to stay still long enough to get her clean. (He's seen both Jimmy and Breena chasing a half-naked Molly through the house, clean diaper and wipes in hand.) He's not having that problem with Kelly, she's just laying on her back, kicking around a bit, looking pretty alert and peaceful.
He got her cleaned up, in a fresh diaper, and buttoned back into the onesie. (For her first day home, she had the one that Jimmy and Breena gave them the day after their wedding. The first of the baby presents.)
They usually, if at this point in time anything involving Kelly can said to be usual, feed her right after diaper change, but she's pretty calm, and he hasn't actually had a chance to sit with her in the rocking chair, yet. So he settles down, his baby on his chest, rocking gently, and of course the chair has great action, smooth and easy, and it's very comfortable.
Sitting there, he's feeling very connected to Gibbs, who he just knows is behind him, watching, and this sense of family, and maybe for his line it's not unbroken the way it's supposed to be, but it's his, and it's real, and with Kelly in his hands, breathing gently against his neck, and Gibbs behind him, watching, it stretches through his life to time before him and time after.
"Doing it right?"
He feels the nod, unable to see or hear it, and a second later Gibbs's hand is on his shoulder. Tim squeezes it for a second, then wipes his eyes, and stands up. "Probably a good idea to feed her before she starts crying."
"That's always a good idea."
This time feeding her went without a hitch, and shortly after Jethro sent Tim up for another nap, and since the idea of sleeping during the day when Jethro was there, and then being there for Abby at night struck him as a good plan, he got the nap.
The next time he woke up he didn't hear anything. For a minute he just lay there enjoying not feeling horrendously tired and the fact that he didn't need to leap up and do anything right this second.
But after a few seconds of that, his inborn Dad skills perked up and decided he needed to investigate. Gibbs is down there. Everything is probably fine. But he can't just trust that. So, after checking Abby, seeing she was still asleep, and this time looking fairly peaceful, like she might have dropped out of exhausted sleep and into restful sleep. He got up and headed to the nursery.
No Kelly.
Downstairs.
He found Gibbs on the sofa, stretched out, bare feet, t-shirt and jeans, his usual off work summertime outfit, gently humming something as he stroked Kelly's back while she slept.
He remembered vaguely that he'd had some sort of father's day present planned for Gibbs. (Pictures were put together, wrapped, and delivered to Tony and Ziva, who were not expecting to take a brand new baby home on Father's Day and thus could be trusted to deliver the present to Gibbs without forgetting about it.) And that, if there was time, he wanted to add a shot of Gibbs with the baby girls to it. So he backtracked a few steps, grabbed his phone, and shot Gibbs cuddling Kelly.
Gibbs looked up at him as he did that.
"Hope that's not a' take a picture and die, McGee' moment."
Gibbs shook his head as Tim headed to sit on the end of the sofa. "Want a copy of it."
"You'll get one."
"Good." Gibbs kissed the top of her head. "Shouldn't let her get to used to sleeping on people."
"It's okay."
"You might not think that when the only place she wants to sleep is your chest and you want to do something besides be a pillow."
Tim smiles. "I'll call you. You're good for pillow duty."
Gibbs laughed at that, then checked the clock. "Should get started on dinner."
"I got it; you be a pillow."
Gibbs shook his head and slowly started up. "I'll go back to work soon enough. Let me take care of you guys while I can."
And like speaking of the devil is supposed to bring him near, Gibbs's phone began to ring. So Tim took Kelly, and Gibbs got the phone call. He can tell by Gibbs' posture that it's a work call, likely Tony. He hears the traditional Gibbs on the phone routine of "Yes… Uh huh... Ya think? Go do it..."
Gibbs tucked the phone back into his pocket, and headed into Tim's kitchen. "How fast does your grill heat up?"
"For burgers, about ten minutes."
Gibbs headed out and turned it on, and was back a minute later. "Nice grill."
"Jimmy and Breena got it for us."
Kelly shifted for a few seconds, stretching, and both of them went silent and still, not wanting to wake her up, but she seemed to settle deeper into sleep, so Gibbs got the ground beef, and Tim sat at the table, holding her against his chest, enjoying this.
"Jethro, don't you need to be at work?"
Gibbs looked up from mixing hamburger with A1 sauce, salt, and pepper. "Don't want the help?"
"God! No! Love the help, very happy to have you here, just… It's an active case. I've never seen you take off in the middle of an active case before."
Gibbs shrugs. The reason behind it is… well, kind of touchy-feely, not the sort of thing he's comfortable really saying, but this is Tim, and he does better with words than looks, so…
"It's Tony's team, Tim. I'm just making sure the transition goes smooth. He doesn't need me hanging around, too much..." That's part of it, but there's more. "There's got to be life after NCIS. Can't just lay on a beach drinking cervezas."
"Like Mike."
"Mike had more irons in the fire than anyone knew about, even me. Yeah, there was a lot of booze and senoritas, but he wasn't just lying around."
"Okay."
"More to life means having a life outside of work. This," and Gibbs look filled in that he means this family, "is a lot of it. It'll be the anchor. And there'll be other stuff, too. Has to. Don't want you and Abby and Tony and Ziva and Jimmy and Breena getting sick of me. Don't want to be that guy who just hangs on."
"You're not."
Getting to where you need to go."Try that again when I've been retired for a year." He shakes his head, he's getting close to it, but not getting to the heart of it. He can feel the presence of Shannon and his Kelly very strongly, and closes his eyes, because seeing them here would be disconcerting
"Jethro?" Tim sounds concerned.
He opens his eyes, goes back to working on the hamburger patties. "I was supposed to be a dad. Supposed to be a granddad." He looks at the ring Tim got him to put back on. The ring he thinks he's getting closer to ready to take off again. "I'm getting back to being the man I was supposed to be. This, being here, for you and Abby and for Tony and Ziva when they have their babies, providing back up support for Ducky with Jimmy and Breena's, this is being the man I was meant to be."
Tim smiled at that. Over Tim's shoulder he catches a quick glimpse of Shannon smiling at him, too.
Next
A/N: So, those of you who are serious Sean Murray fans are probably at least vaguely aware of the fact that there are pics of him with his kids floating around out there. Like the one of him in a rocking chair holding his baby daughter. So, why have I not posted that, and why am I not going to post pictures like them? Because he's gone online and flat out said those pictures were stolen, and while it's true he's a public person, his kids aren't, so please respect their privacy and don't post those shots. So, while I will search high and low for shots I can use to illustrate Shards, none of those are going into this story line.
October 16, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 235
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 235:
Tim is never, ever going to curse the guy going fifteen miles an hour under the limit out again. Okay, not like he ever walked up to the guy and said anything, but he often had some pretty choice words floating through his mind.
But not anymore.
No, if he’s stuck behind a car creeping along, dodging pot hole, with a white-knuckled guy at the wheel, he’s going to assume there’s some insanely precious cargo in that car, like, say, a two-day-old-infant, and maybe a woman who just gave birth to said two-day-old-infant.
Honestly, he’s actually more nervous about Abby in the car than Kelly. The huge stack of regulations for taking care of your just-had-a-baby wife included no driving for two weeks, which struck him as weird, so he asked about it, and well, yeah, apparently Kelly’s in a tiny seat designed to keep her in place and protected if anything happens, but Abby’s insides are currently being held in by slowly dissolving stitches and a car accident right now would be a really bad idea.
He’s also nervous about the fact that this is a new car. Okay, not brand new, he’s had it for a month. But he had the Porsche for almost a decade, and he could drive that in his sleep. His body knew how it moved, understood it’s idiosyncrasies. He was one with that car when driving it.
New baby-friendly car.The Highlander is big, way too damn big, and compared to the Porsche really unresponsive, and he’s just nervous about it because he doesn’t have a good feel for what precisely is going to happen when he presses his foot down on the gas or break or exactly what sort of lag he’s going to get between beginning to turn the wheel and the car actually moving.
So, to say that he is driving carefully, bordering on paranoid, is not in any way, shape, or form an exaggeration.
They’d gotten the car seat that supposedly fits all ages, and Kelly looks ridiculously tiny in it. He’d also, finally, gotten a good, tight swaddle on her, just to realize that the little strap goes between her legs, so that she can’t be swaddled in there
I do not like this!So, to add to the general fun of trying to get home with a new baby in the car and a healing wife, he’s also got this small person who is complaining, loudly, about the fact that she’s got no motor control and these weird things that are attached to her keep flapping around and she finds it just really unnerving and would very much like it to stop, please.
They finally got home. Only took him forty-five minutes to drive three miles.
Gibbs had an awfully smug smile on his face when they pulled in.
When they got home, Gibbs snagged the prescriptions and headed off to fill them, giving them a while at home, alone, just the three of them.
Abby had found the little nest on the sofa that Jimmy had made for her, and crashed into it. Right now if she’s not actively talking to you (and sometimes when she is), she falls asleep. (Jimmy says that’s the pain meds.) Which left Tim, holding Kelly, standing in his home, not entirely sure what to do next.
But, after a minute, when it occurred to him that Kelly appeared to be asleep too, that there was something he wanted to do, and hadn’t been able to really do comfortably because of the lay out at the hospital.
But he could here.
So he sat next to Abby, snuggled in close to her, (carefully, she’s still awfully sore) and held both of his girls in his arms.
And a minute into that, feel asleep, too.
Half an hour later, when Kelly decided it was meal time, he was able to sit behind Abby, support her body with his, really be there with her for this.
They weren't that big the day before yesterday.Comments with Jimmy about nursing breasts aside, it’s not erotic.
Might be eventually. Like if his libido ever kicks back in again. Right now, it just feels unplugged. Best he can tell, he hasn’t thought about sex, at all, since the morning before Kelly was born, and that’s got to a record for him. And he does have to admit the fact that each of Abby’s breasts are bigger than Kelly’s head and that even with her mouth wide open she’s still not getting much more than just the nipple blows his mind, but not in any sort of a ohhh sexy sort of way.
Mostly just in a Wow, that changed fast sort of way. With a side of gosh, that can’t be comfortable.
So, there’s no sense of titillation at watching this, being part of it.
But there is a soul-deep sense of primal satisfaction at his. His woman, his child, both of them wrapped in his arms. He’s ready to go off and kill the saber-toothed tigers that may threaten them, and return with food to keep them strong and healthy.
Or since the saber-toothed tigers are extinct and the fridge and pantry are already full of food, he can sit here with them, his chin on Abby’s shoulder, his arms under hers, helping to keep Kelly’s weight off her abdomen.
He kisses Abby’s neck, pets Kelly’s cheek.
Like before, he finds himself wanting better, stronger, more powerful words than I love you, but right now, especially with as tired as he is, he doesn’t have them.
“I love you.”
Abby nods, resting her head against his.
It feels like sleepwalking. Probably. She’s never actually sleep walked, slept walked?, no matter, whatever it is, she’s never actually done it before, but if she were to assume what it’s like, it’s like right now.
Time’s gone. Just vanished. It gallops by in two hour runs that take up only seconds when she’s asleep. It drags out into day long minutes of hyper-aware, nervous worry when she’s awake. And then slides away again when Kelly’s at her breast or she’s trying to listen to something but her eye slide shut and she’s asleep again.
Abby’s honestly not sure what day it is, let alone time. Daytime, probably, she can hear rain and it’s pretty gray behind the artificial light of their living room, so it could also be evening or morning but probably not the middle of the night.
The only solid thing in her life right now is pain. That’s always there. Stronger sometimes, weaker others, but always there, waiting for her to laugh or cough or try to lay on her side or get up or something. Sometimes, for a minute, when she’s sleeping, it feels like it slips away, but that’s a lie, it’s just hiding, waiting for her to get comfortable, so it can jump out and pounce on her like a cat playing with a wounded mouse.
But the cat does that because it doesn’t want to get hurt. It has to make sure the mouse is too far gone to really fight when it takes a bite, otherwise it might get bit in return and end up with a nasty infection that kills it.
The pain’s just doing it for kicks and giggles.
It likes seeing her almost relax and then jump back out again, reminding her she’s not whole. It enjoys rubbing her nose in the fact that she’s wounded, damaged, broken, ripped shreds of a pulp of the woman she used to be.
Her breasts ache. They hurt as they get full when she needs to feed Kelly. Then they feel like streaming fire when her milk lets down. Her nipples scream when she nurses. The lactation consultant said Kelly was doing it right, she had a good latch, but that ‘it could be a little uncomfortable at first’ while her nipples toughened up.
Supposedly it’ll get better.
The doctor says the incision is healing up nicely. Supposedly that’ll get better, too.
But she doesn’t see how it can. Life’s stuck in this blurry, eternal gray now. Kelly was born seventeen years ago, or maybe two days, she doesn’t really know. She jerked a little, aware of the fact that she’d fallen asleep in Tim’s arms, while nursing Kelly, and she can’t do that.
Yeah, this time he was there, so Kelly didn’t get dropped, but she can’t sleep, she could have dropped her, could have broken her, so she can’t sleep, if she sleeps then something bad could happen.
Gibbs loomed up out of somewhere, asking what she wants for lunch, and she just doesn’t care, at all. Now that Tim’s holding Kelly (he was behind her a second ago, but now he’s not, now he’s standing in the middle of the room next to Gibbs, holding Kelly. God, did she drop Kelly? Did he have to pick her up?) safely out of her reach, she can sleep.
She’s half aware of Tim petting her head, saying something about setting some food out, as she slipped out of awake back into sleep.
Tim looked back up at Jethro. “I think the pain killers are really knocking her out.”
“What’s she on?”
“Toradol in the hospital, and I think you got Percocet for her.”
They headed into the kitchen. Tim offered Kelly to Gibbs, but he shook his head, signaling, you cuddle the baby, let me learn my way around your kitchen and make you two some food. Tim nodded at that.
“You want some coffee?”
“Yeah. There’s some old stuff with caffeine in it in there, do it a third caff two thirds no caff, I’m thinking I’m going to need some help with the new sleep schedule.”
Gibbs smiles at that, finds the coffee bags and sets up the machines. Then he takes out his phone and adds a note.
“What’s that?”
“Reminder to get you some real coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“Got cold cuts. Club sandwich?”
“Sounds good.”
“Thinking I’d make some burgers for dinner.”
Tim nodded, noticing that Kelly seemed pretty droopy. “Think she’s almost asleep. I’m going to put her in the crib.”
Gibbs smiled at that. “Good luck.”
He got up the stairs, got her very gently laid onto the crib, and got almost all of the way back out of the nursery before the fussing began.
So, three minutes later, he was back in the kitchen with Kelly, and the little bouncy-seat snoozing thing they had. He set that on the table, put her in it, and she decided to conk out.
“Don’t think she likes the quiet.”
Gibbs looks up from slicing a tomato, his amused expression on his face.
“What?”
“Works better if you leave her in there more than thirty seconds. They usually fuss a little before falling asleep.”
Tim shrugged. “Want Abby to sleep, and she doesn’t sleep if Kelly’s fussing…”
Gibbs nodded at that, too. “Yeah.”
Tim crosses to the dining room door, looking in on Abby in the living room. She’s sleeping, but doesn’t look peaceful, at all. He wants to go kiss her, pet her some, but he’s afraid he’ll wake her up, so he heads back into the kitchen.
He tilts his head toward where Abby is. “This is normal, right?”
Gibbs shrugged. “Back when I did this, they didn’t let Shannon out of bed for three days. Didn’t go home for a week. Kelly did bottle feeds every other feed for the first three days so she could get more rest.”
“Might have to try that. She looks so tired.”
“What’d Jimmy say?”
“That this is normal.”
Gibbs sent him a then relax about it look, and handed him a plate with a club sandwich on it. Tim took it to the sofa and put it on the little table next to Abby. He’s thinking that if she doesn’t wake up on her own before Kelly’s next meal, he’ll feed her himself, and let her get six straight hours of sleep. She needs it.
Next
Chapter 235:
Tim is never, ever going to curse the guy going fifteen miles an hour under the limit out again. Okay, not like he ever walked up to the guy and said anything, but he often had some pretty choice words floating through his mind.
But not anymore.
No, if he’s stuck behind a car creeping along, dodging pot hole, with a white-knuckled guy at the wheel, he’s going to assume there’s some insanely precious cargo in that car, like, say, a two-day-old-infant, and maybe a woman who just gave birth to said two-day-old-infant.
Honestly, he’s actually more nervous about Abby in the car than Kelly. The huge stack of regulations for taking care of your just-had-a-baby wife included no driving for two weeks, which struck him as weird, so he asked about it, and well, yeah, apparently Kelly’s in a tiny seat designed to keep her in place and protected if anything happens, but Abby’s insides are currently being held in by slowly dissolving stitches and a car accident right now would be a really bad idea.
He’s also nervous about the fact that this is a new car. Okay, not brand new, he’s had it for a month. But he had the Porsche for almost a decade, and he could drive that in his sleep. His body knew how it moved, understood it’s idiosyncrasies. He was one with that car when driving it.
New baby-friendly car.The Highlander is big, way too damn big, and compared to the Porsche really unresponsive, and he’s just nervous about it because he doesn’t have a good feel for what precisely is going to happen when he presses his foot down on the gas or break or exactly what sort of lag he’s going to get between beginning to turn the wheel and the car actually moving. So, to say that he is driving carefully, bordering on paranoid, is not in any way, shape, or form an exaggeration.
They’d gotten the car seat that supposedly fits all ages, and Kelly looks ridiculously tiny in it. He’d also, finally, gotten a good, tight swaddle on her, just to realize that the little strap goes between her legs, so that she can’t be swaddled in there
I do not like this!So, to add to the general fun of trying to get home with a new baby in the car and a healing wife, he’s also got this small person who is complaining, loudly, about the fact that she’s got no motor control and these weird things that are attached to her keep flapping around and she finds it just really unnerving and would very much like it to stop, please.They finally got home. Only took him forty-five minutes to drive three miles.
Gibbs had an awfully smug smile on his face when they pulled in.
When they got home, Gibbs snagged the prescriptions and headed off to fill them, giving them a while at home, alone, just the three of them.
Abby had found the little nest on the sofa that Jimmy had made for her, and crashed into it. Right now if she’s not actively talking to you (and sometimes when she is), she falls asleep. (Jimmy says that’s the pain meds.) Which left Tim, holding Kelly, standing in his home, not entirely sure what to do next.
But, after a minute, when it occurred to him that Kelly appeared to be asleep too, that there was something he wanted to do, and hadn’t been able to really do comfortably because of the lay out at the hospital.
But he could here.
So he sat next to Abby, snuggled in close to her, (carefully, she’s still awfully sore) and held both of his girls in his arms.
And a minute into that, feel asleep, too.
Half an hour later, when Kelly decided it was meal time, he was able to sit behind Abby, support her body with his, really be there with her for this.
They weren't that big the day before yesterday.Comments with Jimmy about nursing breasts aside, it’s not erotic.Might be eventually. Like if his libido ever kicks back in again. Right now, it just feels unplugged. Best he can tell, he hasn’t thought about sex, at all, since the morning before Kelly was born, and that’s got to a record for him. And he does have to admit the fact that each of Abby’s breasts are bigger than Kelly’s head and that even with her mouth wide open she’s still not getting much more than just the nipple blows his mind, but not in any sort of a ohhh sexy sort of way.
Mostly just in a Wow, that changed fast sort of way. With a side of gosh, that can’t be comfortable.
So, there’s no sense of titillation at watching this, being part of it.
But there is a soul-deep sense of primal satisfaction at his. His woman, his child, both of them wrapped in his arms. He’s ready to go off and kill the saber-toothed tigers that may threaten them, and return with food to keep them strong and healthy.
Or since the saber-toothed tigers are extinct and the fridge and pantry are already full of food, he can sit here with them, his chin on Abby’s shoulder, his arms under hers, helping to keep Kelly’s weight off her abdomen.
He kisses Abby’s neck, pets Kelly’s cheek.
Like before, he finds himself wanting better, stronger, more powerful words than I love you, but right now, especially with as tired as he is, he doesn’t have them.
“I love you.”
Abby nods, resting her head against his.
It feels like sleepwalking. Probably. She’s never actually sleep walked, slept walked?, no matter, whatever it is, she’s never actually done it before, but if she were to assume what it’s like, it’s like right now.
Time’s gone. Just vanished. It gallops by in two hour runs that take up only seconds when she’s asleep. It drags out into day long minutes of hyper-aware, nervous worry when she’s awake. And then slides away again when Kelly’s at her breast or she’s trying to listen to something but her eye slide shut and she’s asleep again.
Abby’s honestly not sure what day it is, let alone time. Daytime, probably, she can hear rain and it’s pretty gray behind the artificial light of their living room, so it could also be evening or morning but probably not the middle of the night.
The only solid thing in her life right now is pain. That’s always there. Stronger sometimes, weaker others, but always there, waiting for her to laugh or cough or try to lay on her side or get up or something. Sometimes, for a minute, when she’s sleeping, it feels like it slips away, but that’s a lie, it’s just hiding, waiting for her to get comfortable, so it can jump out and pounce on her like a cat playing with a wounded mouse.
But the cat does that because it doesn’t want to get hurt. It has to make sure the mouse is too far gone to really fight when it takes a bite, otherwise it might get bit in return and end up with a nasty infection that kills it.
The pain’s just doing it for kicks and giggles.
It likes seeing her almost relax and then jump back out again, reminding her she’s not whole. It enjoys rubbing her nose in the fact that she’s wounded, damaged, broken, ripped shreds of a pulp of the woman she used to be.
Her breasts ache. They hurt as they get full when she needs to feed Kelly. Then they feel like streaming fire when her milk lets down. Her nipples scream when she nurses. The lactation consultant said Kelly was doing it right, she had a good latch, but that ‘it could be a little uncomfortable at first’ while her nipples toughened up.
Supposedly it’ll get better.
The doctor says the incision is healing up nicely. Supposedly that’ll get better, too.
But she doesn’t see how it can. Life’s stuck in this blurry, eternal gray now. Kelly was born seventeen years ago, or maybe two days, she doesn’t really know. She jerked a little, aware of the fact that she’d fallen asleep in Tim’s arms, while nursing Kelly, and she can’t do that.
Yeah, this time he was there, so Kelly didn’t get dropped, but she can’t sleep, she could have dropped her, could have broken her, so she can’t sleep, if she sleeps then something bad could happen.
Gibbs loomed up out of somewhere, asking what she wants for lunch, and she just doesn’t care, at all. Now that Tim’s holding Kelly (he was behind her a second ago, but now he’s not, now he’s standing in the middle of the room next to Gibbs, holding Kelly. God, did she drop Kelly? Did he have to pick her up?) safely out of her reach, she can sleep.
She’s half aware of Tim petting her head, saying something about setting some food out, as she slipped out of awake back into sleep.
Tim looked back up at Jethro. “I think the pain killers are really knocking her out.”
“What’s she on?”
“Toradol in the hospital, and I think you got Percocet for her.”
They headed into the kitchen. Tim offered Kelly to Gibbs, but he shook his head, signaling, you cuddle the baby, let me learn my way around your kitchen and make you two some food. Tim nodded at that.
“You want some coffee?”
“Yeah. There’s some old stuff with caffeine in it in there, do it a third caff two thirds no caff, I’m thinking I’m going to need some help with the new sleep schedule.”
Gibbs smiles at that, finds the coffee bags and sets up the machines. Then he takes out his phone and adds a note.
“What’s that?”
“Reminder to get you some real coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“Got cold cuts. Club sandwich?”
“Sounds good.”
“Thinking I’d make some burgers for dinner.”
Tim nodded, noticing that Kelly seemed pretty droopy. “Think she’s almost asleep. I’m going to put her in the crib.”
Gibbs smiled at that. “Good luck.”
He got up the stairs, got her very gently laid onto the crib, and got almost all of the way back out of the nursery before the fussing began.
So, three minutes later, he was back in the kitchen with Kelly, and the little bouncy-seat snoozing thing they had. He set that on the table, put her in it, and she decided to conk out.
“Don’t think she likes the quiet.”
Gibbs looks up from slicing a tomato, his amused expression on his face.
“What?”
“Works better if you leave her in there more than thirty seconds. They usually fuss a little before falling asleep.”
Tim shrugged. “Want Abby to sleep, and she doesn’t sleep if Kelly’s fussing…”
Gibbs nodded at that, too. “Yeah.”
Tim crosses to the dining room door, looking in on Abby in the living room. She’s sleeping, but doesn’t look peaceful, at all. He wants to go kiss her, pet her some, but he’s afraid he’ll wake her up, so he heads back into the kitchen.
He tilts his head toward where Abby is. “This is normal, right?”
Gibbs shrugged. “Back when I did this, they didn’t let Shannon out of bed for three days. Didn’t go home for a week. Kelly did bottle feeds every other feed for the first three days so she could get more rest.”
“Might have to try that. She looks so tired.”
“What’d Jimmy say?”
“That this is normal.”
Gibbs sent him a then relax about it look, and handed him a plate with a club sandwich on it. Tim took it to the sofa and put it on the little table next to Abby. He’s thinking that if she doesn’t wake up on her own before Kelly’s next meal, he’ll feed her himself, and let her get six straight hours of sleep. She needs it.
Next
October 15, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 234
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 234: The Adventure Continues
“So, how are you doing?” Jimmy asked Tim as he pulled out of his parking place. It’s the first bit of time they’ve had alone since before Kelly was born.
“Besides freaked out by the blood?”
“Besides that. There’s something wrong with you if your wife is bleeding in front of you and you’re cool with that.”
Tim tilted his head, acknowledging that. “Good. Happy. Tired. Little scared.”
“That’s normal, too.”
Tim nods, not paying too much attention to Jimmy or the car ride. His mind’s pretty firmly back at the hospital with Abby and Kelly.
“When we get to your place, get a nap. I’ll check your kitchen, do a grocery run for you, but you get a nap.”
“Don’t want to be gone that long.”
“Trust me, you need it. You’ll sleep better in your own bed. And there’s absolutely nothing going on over there right now that Jethro can’t handle.”
“I know but—“
“Doctor’s orders. Get that nap. She does the heavy lifting on taking care of Kelly. You do the heavy lifting on taking care of her, and you can’t take care of her if you’re fried. Besides, I’m the one with the car, so you’re stuck there until I take you back. Might as well get a nap.”
“Did you and Gibbs plan this?”
Smug Jimmy.
“Didn’t need to. That sofa in your room folds out into a bed. You’re out of it enough you haven’t figured that out. That means you aren’t safe to drive, and you really need some sleep.”
“Fine.”
Jimmy’s smiling as he watches the road.
“You’re looking awfully smug.”
Jimmy reached over and squeezed Tim’s shoulder. “Just enjoying this. Welcome to fatherhood.”
Tim laughed at that.
They got to Tim’s house, walked in, and Jimmy pointed up the stairs. “Go, sleep.”
And, well, yeah, bed felt good. Laying full out felt good. (He quickly reminded himself to give both Jimmy and Gibbs a headslap for not pointing out the sofa folded out, thus leaving him with a kink in his neck from sleeping on the too short sofa.) And for about a second he noticed that not worrying about needing to leap up and tend to Abby or Kelly was pretty nice too, but only for a second, because the second after that, he was asleep.
Waking up a few hours later, feeling like he’s been drugged and is trying to pull through a murky haze of physical and emotional tiredness, Tim realizes that part of what is happening is that humans are, more or less, diurnal.
And he’s adjusting to naps 24/7.
Laying in his bed, rubbing his eyes, he’s got no idea what time it is. Daytime, but it could be 10 in the morning or 5 in the afternoon.
But after a moment, he realized the nurse came in in the morning, gave Abby the all clear to get up, so it can’t be earlier than late morning. So he finally looked over, saw 2:55 on his clock, and realized he’d been asleep for four hours, and that Kelly was now a full day old.
Jimmy was right, he did sleep better in his own bed. Enough room to actually lie down was good. And that might be part of feeling drugged. He’d actually slept instead of dozing.
But he did slowly get up, and dressed, and snagged clothing for tomorrow. When they’d go home. Together.
He noticed something, he still had on Abby’s wedding and engagement ring. He shuffled through her collars, wrist cuffs, and other jewelry and found what he wanted, it’s a plain, white gold chain. He worked off her rings, threaded the necklace through them, and then put it around his neck. When he got back she could wear her rings again. One step closer to normal.
He headed into Kelly’s room, fingers resting on her crib. Tomorrow, afternoon maybe, she’d be sleeping in here.
He heard the footsteps, but didn’t turn until Jimmy put his hand on his shoulder. When Tim turned, he said, “Tomorrow.”
“Yep. Feeling better?”
“Nope. Feel like all my joints are glued together.”
Jimmy laughed a little. “That’ll be true every time you wake up for about two months.”
“Wonderful.” Tim held up the bundle of clothing he needed to put in his go bag. “I’m ready.”
“Let’s get you back, then.”
Tim turned toward the door and then noticed something. Previously the room had been set with the crib against the far wall, changing table/dresser on the wall to the left, rocking chair in the middle a few steps from the crib. But something new had wandered into the nursery.
It was one of those tray table things they’d gotten as wedding presents from Fornell.
And sitting on it was several bottles of water, some apples, protein bars, a little bowl with nuts, and a bag of M&Ms.
“Jimmy?” He knows he didn’t put it there, and he’s awfully sure there is no such thing as a snack fairy, which means Jimmy must have done it.
“Nursing mamas need to eat. A lot. Since she won’t be able to go up the stairs more than once a day for the first week, when she’s up here, she’ll be up here, can’t sprint down for munchies. And when you’re up here, you’ll hopefully be sleeping, and won’t want to be running down to fetch munchies. So, I stocked up the nursing station for the first shift. Did the same with your sofa. Wasn’t entirely sure where’d she want to be, but right now your sofa, right in the prime TV watching spot, is hers.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Breena’s mom did it for us while we were still in the hospital. I remembered Breena really appreciated that, so I did it for Abby.”
“Molly coming to visit today?”
“Breena’s bringing her over with dinner. She’s been babbling non-stop about the new baby. Can’t wait to see Kelly.”
They were in the car when Tim asked, “What’d you get?”
“Stuff you need. Stuff you don’t know you need.”
“Like what?”
“About six half gallons of ice cream, protein bars, fresh and dried fruit, lots of nuts, eggs, milk, basically lots of fat, calories, calcium and protein, all the building blocks of good milk. ‘Course, if Kelly’s allergic to any of this stuff, it’ll make her miserable, but let’s not try to jump that hurdle until you know if you need to or not.”
“Great.”
“Doubled your store of diapers, tripled baby wipes. Trust me, you’re gonna go through them way faster than you think you will. Cloth diapers.”
“We weren’t going to—“
“Not for that. Use them as spit up bibs/clothing protectors/handy wipes for anything that might come out of Kelly. They’re cheaper and more useful than seventy million paper towels. Think we’ve got like 100 of them and never seem to have too many, and we’ve never actually used one as a diaper.”
“All right.”
“Didn’t see any nursing pads, so I got them, too.”
“Some went with her to the hospital. Rest are in our room.”
“I know Breena was going to pick up some nursing bras for her. Can’t really get those ahead of time.”
“She told me they had that planned. So, what do I owe you?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Year from now, pay it down the line to Tony. Looks like they’re gonna be working on a little DiNozzo awfully soon.”
“Yeah, it does.”
When they got back, Gibbs was walking the halls with Kelly. She was awake, fussing a little, but not full out crying.
Gibbs handed her over without having to be asked, and said, “Just finished eating. The doc’s in doing a wound check for Abby.” Tim doesn’t need an explanation for why Gibbs didn’t stick around for that.
He takes Kelly, who decides this is a prime moment to go from fussing to full on crying, and heads back to their room, patting her back, shushing away. “Help me out, is this the I need to burp cry or the I’m sleepy cry?”
She cried louder. It wasn’t much help.
“Diaper change?”
Three more steps got them back to their room. The wound care specialist was in, checking Abby over, he caught the tail end of, “…everything looks good but if it gets red, hot, or starts leaking any sort of discharge you need to see your doctor.”
“Okay.”
The specialist looked up at Tim. “I was just telling your wife that everything looks fine…” and then proceeded to give him the full wound care instructions and things to look out for, as well. “We’ll do one more quick check tomorrow morning, but assuming everything looks fine, you’re going home tomorrow around lunch time.”
It’s a bit difficult to have a conversation with a small crying person in his arms, but he’s got the feeling the specialist has done this more than a few times before. So he nods, repeats back the instructions, and feels a general sense of pleasure at the idea of getting home with Abby and Kelly.
When the specialist left, he sat on the end of Abby’s bed. “Did she burp?”
“Yes.”
“Diaper changed?”
“Gibbs got it when she woke up.”
Tim grinned at that. “So he does change diapers.”
“He does when I give him puppy eyes about grabbing three more minutes of sleep.”
He outright laughed at that. Then laid Kelly on his legs, looking up at him, and said to her, “You’re fed and burped. Is all this about a wet diaper?” as he began unswaddling her and checked.
“Nope. Dry diaper. Sleepy?” He followed the how to swaddle directions and ended up with a very loosely wrapped baby who could kick her way out of the blankets.
Abby watched his efforts, not saying anything, but after a minute he handed Kelly over, and she did a… better job. Neither of them produced the perfectly smooth and snug bundle the nurses or Gibbs managed.
But, not having managed it, they stumbled onto the issue. Too hot. Babies might in general like having a snug little bundle to keep all their limbs in place, but they also don’t enjoy overheating. And having gotten a bit of extra ventilation, the crying stopped.
Abby took her cap off. “It’s what, ninety out there?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need a hat.”
“Maybe not.” He noticed Abby was looking awfully sleepy. “I think we’re gonna get a walk. How about you get some more sleep?”
“That sounds really good.”
He kissed her and headed for the waiting room area. He doesn’t know how they set it up, but at any given time at least one someone who wants time with an awake Kelly will be out there.
Sarah. She sees him and smiles, and he goes to sit next to her.
Kelly’s laying on his lap, and he’s trying to get this swaddling thing worked out. He’s guessing a big chunk of the current fussing is based on little arms and legs flailing around and supposedly swaddling is the answer to that. It shouldn’t be hard, but for whatever reason the neat, tight little bundle the nurses and Gibbs and Jimmy and Breena can all produce with basically no effort at all turns into an adventure in remarkably ineffective origami when he’s in charge.
“You want me to do it?” Sarah asked.
“When have you ever swaddled a baby?”
“Let’s see… How about nine thousand times over the three years I was babysitting for the Millers?”
Getting better“Oh.” He tucked the blanket over Kelly, snugged it in close, and managed to get her into a rather lopsided bundle, but she at least wasn’t flailing anymore, and he could claim the hole at the bottom was additional ventilation for her so she didn’t overheat. “And no. I don’t want you to do it. I need to learn how to do this, and I’m not if you guys keep doing it for me.”
“No problem.” She sits next to him, gently stroking her niece’s cheek. Kelly turns toward her, looking in her general direction, with an expression Tim thinks means, this is nice, where’s the milk? But it could also be, feeling sleepy or mild pique.
Understanding entirely non-verbal communication from someone he’s just met is tricky.
“So… Mom was pretty happy you sent her a picture of Kelly.”
He rose his eyebrows, feeling a little surprised. He hadn’t realized he’d done that, but thinking back, he knew she was on the family list and he hadn’t taken her off.
“I’m guessing by that look it wasn’t intentional.”
Tim shook his head. He picks Kelly off his lap and holds her close, his chin on the top of her head, feeling her in his arms, hands really, inhaling that sweet, milky, baby scent.
Sarah watches them, waiting to see if Tim will say anything, but he doesn’t, so she says, “What do you want me to do?”
“How do you mean?”
“With mom and dad. Penny filled me in and…” Sarah squeezed his shoulder. “Whatever you want or need. I’m here.”
“Oh.” They’d never gotten around to that lunch with Penny, so they haven’t talked about this, and to some degree he’d rather not. For another long moment he held Kelly, feeling the soft, warm weight of her against his skin, and with that comes a level of clarity. “He held you like this, you know… Well, not exactly like this, you were a few months old when he got back. But mom certainly did…”
“And you did.”
“Yeah. We were both a lot smaller then.” He sits there, holding Kelly, hearing her breathe and the soft, little chirpy sounds she’s making. “This sort of focuses things. They’re your parents, and they didn’t fuck you over, so… Do what you like. I’m not going to hold it against you or think less of you if you keep a relationship with them. I’m not going to make you pick, me or them.
“Not gonna do that to Penny, either. She did this, too, for him. Felt his fingers close around hers and fell instantly, unbreakably in love.” Her hand is out of the swaddle, and his finger strokes over the back of her hand, flits over her fingers, still amazed at how tiny her hand is, and feels four fingers clasp around his.
“What about you and them? Mom was pretty excited to get your text.”
“That was an accident. I forgot to take her contact off my family list… I’ll forgive her eventually. I’m angry, really angry, but I don’t want to cut her out completely. Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday and she should be here for this, but…” He lets it trail off. It hurts that she isn’t here, in a way he wasn’t expecting, but he knows that right now, seeing her would hurt even worse.
Sarah wraps her arm around him.
“Things will stay the same with Dad. Penny tells me that he asks you for updates on me, pictures and stuff… No pictures for him of Kelly or any other kids we may have. He doesn’t get to be anywhere near my children. He doesn’t get to know them, even second hand. That’s something you can do for me.”
“I can do that.”
“Maybe he’d be okay with Kelly, because she’s a girl, but I’m not risking it.”
“It’s okay. I won’t pass anything on. Won’t answer questions about you guys anymore.”
Sarah’s hand rests on his, her fingers between his on Kelly’s back. “He did this for you, too, you know?”
Tim closes his eyes, feeling those words, and the sensation, the emotions of this, brand new baby, his child, in his hands, and all the hopes and dreams and fears and love. “Yeah. I do. But it didn’t work. He didn’t fall in love with me. He fell in love with an idea.” He kissed the top of Kelly’s head, silently promising her that no matter who or what she wants to be, that he’ll be there for her. He looked back up at Sarah. “So, what are you going to do?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Watch him a lot more carefully if I have kids. I don’t think he’ll get to go on one on one sailing trips.”
“Good plan.”
“He’ll be stateside again in a few months, probably see him then.”
Tim nodded at that.
“What about you and him? Glen and I get married, can both of you be at the wedding?”
Tim shrugs. Spending time near his dad’s really low on his to do list. Napalming his sister’s chance at her daddy giving her away for her wedding also isn’t something he wants to do. “I promise you I will not start anything. I can’t promise I won’t end it if he does. I’m pretty much done with taking shit I don’t have to, and he’s at the top of the list of guys I’m not taking any more shit from. Last time I saw him we were in the same room for less than five minutes, with Gibbs, investigating a murder, and he still decided to make a few cracks about my weight and love life. I’ll play by the rules if he does, but if he doesn’t…” There’s something else he probably doesn’t need to be thinking about.
He shifts the topic, to something a little more relevant right this second. “So, are you and Glen getting married?
Sarah shrugged. “Talking about it, a little. Not entirely sure if he’s the one.”
“Unless you want to have five or six of these little dudes, I don’t think you need to rush.”
“Nah. How’d you know Abby was the one?”
“Spending almost a decade dating other people and having them come up short compared to her was a clue. But for that almost decade it didn’t much matter because she didn’t want the same thing I did, so I did date, and looked at other people, because we were never going to be happy if I kept wanting this,” and he kissed Kelly’s head, “and she kept wanting a collection of friends with benefits. I lucked out, eventually she decided she liked the idea of where I wanted to go, and agreed to go there with me. But that was just luck. It doesn’t work that way for a lot of people, maybe even most of them. So, is Glen the guy, or is there a guy who kind of looks like him that you haven’t found yet, or he hasn’t become yet?”
“Don’t know. Good question to think about.”
They sat together for a few more minutes. “You gonna tell me about your super top secret editor’s meeting?”
That got a smile out of Sarah. “Super top secret. Like, really, not to be spread around.”
“Who am I going to tell?”
“Your agent? Your publisher?”
“I’ll keep quiet.”
“In December I hand in the last of the Levi books, and with that my contract’s over. My editor, agent, and I are breaking off and starting our own imprint.”
Tim’s eyes went wide. “You’re starting your own publishing house?”
“Yeah. Multi-media, all web-based, all social media, podcasts, ebooks, mini-movies. We’re going to cater to the tumblr fans, and give them everything they want. Tons of content and we’ll run it as a subscription service, like cable. We’ll let the fans play, too, not just consume. Tons of fan created content. If we can get it off the ground, it’ll be awesome. Right now we’re setting up the list of authors we’re going to headhunt.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. You know who Amanda Hawking is?”
“The little girl who wrote those troll books? Sold a million of them on Amazon before she was twenty-six?”
“Yeah. We’re studying her playbook, and going to work it, but with professional production values.”
“Very cool.”
“I really hope so.”
“And you’re the brand name star?”
“One of them.”
“You’ve got takers?”
“A few.”
Tim smiled at that, very happy for Sarah. She stroked Kelly’s cheek. “I think she’s asleep.”
“Then we’re going to go lay down.”
“Good plan, you look like you need a nap.”
This time, he headed back to their room, gently put Kelly in her bassinet and noticed that yes, the sofa did fold out, so he spread it out and got to lie all the way down and that was a whole lot better than trying to sleep sitting down on it.
“Feel like another visitor?” Breena’s voice this time, though he’s heard a variation on that question from everyone in the family now.
“Sure,” Abby says, which was when he really woke up enough to notice she was up and nursing Kelly.He noticed the scent of egg rolls and broccoli and chicken, and sat up rubbing his eyes. “Visitors with food are especially welcome.”
“You have to be really gentle with Aunt Abby and Kelly,” Jimmy says to Molly as they walk in. She’s in his arms. Yes, she can walk, but these days seems to have two speeds, running like crazy or ambling along at toddler speed, which is really, really slow.
So, assuming they want to get somewhere and not have her get into everything around/bump into other people, Jimmy usually carries her.
Molly’s nodding at that, eyes wide, bright smile on her face, Jimmy and Breena’s smiles wrapped together and amped through the innocent joy of a life untouched by any real sorrow. Tim felt around for his phone and started to film this, figuring that they’d all want footage of the first time the girls met.
“Baby!”
“Yep. There she is.” Jimmy gently put Molly down on Abby’s bed, next to Abby, who was holding Kelly. He kept a hand on her, ready to yank her back fast if need be, but letting her get close on her own.
“Baby!”
“Molly, this is Kelly,” Abby said.
Kelly kicked free of the blanket and Molly saw her foot. Thin little foot, narrow sole, tiny toes. She looked at it, very gently, very slowly traced her finger over Kelly’s foot, said, “Baby foots,” and started to laugh.
Tim felt himself laugh in answer. Abby smiled, might have wanted to laugh, but that hurts too much right now. Jimmy kissed the top of Molly’s head, and Breena grinned at her.
“You were that size when you were born,” Breena said to Molly.
“No.” Molly’s shaking her head emphatically. The idea that people change, that she’s been changing is just way beyond Molly’s 16 month old mind.
“Okay. You’ve always been this size,” Breena said while setting down the food.
Tim almost says something like your little brother or sister will be this size, but remembers that Jimmy and Breena haven’t told Molly about the new baby yet. Mostly because she just won’t really get it. Plus the idea of waiting six months is another thing completely beyond her sixteen-month-old mind.
Jimmy’s taking her shoes off and then holds Molly’s foot up to Kelly’s foot. “See how much bigger you are?”
That Molly gets. She’s about twenty-five pounds now, and compared to Kelly looks like a giant. Though three days ago Tim was awfully convinced that Molly was the tiniest little baby girl on Earth.
Kelly finishes the breast she’d been working on, and Abby holds her up to burp. Molly inches a little closer, standing, little wobbly (Jimmy still has a hand on her, making sure she won’t fall into Kelly or Abby) and kisses Kelly’s forehead. Kelly twists her head and sort of squints at her.
For a second there, you could feel the collective ‘Oh How Cute!’ from all the adults.
Molly, after being told
she couldn't play with
the remote.Then Molly noticed the remote to Abby’s bed, and that was the coolest thing ever, which resulted in some less than happy moments while she had a bit of a melt down over not being able to play with it. And Kelly started fussing, having to burp and not burping is uncomfortable and this whole eating thing was a lot easier when the food was just directly deposited through her umbilical cord.
And like with everything else in life, the precious moments are just moments, and parenthood is a whole lot more cleaning up messes and managing the desires of small people than basking in the glow of cute baby joy.
And so, the four of them, now all parents, got to it.
Next
Chapter 234: The Adventure Continues
“So, how are you doing?” Jimmy asked Tim as he pulled out of his parking place. It’s the first bit of time they’ve had alone since before Kelly was born.
“Besides freaked out by the blood?”
“Besides that. There’s something wrong with you if your wife is bleeding in front of you and you’re cool with that.”
Tim tilted his head, acknowledging that. “Good. Happy. Tired. Little scared.”
“That’s normal, too.”
Tim nods, not paying too much attention to Jimmy or the car ride. His mind’s pretty firmly back at the hospital with Abby and Kelly.
“When we get to your place, get a nap. I’ll check your kitchen, do a grocery run for you, but you get a nap.”
“Don’t want to be gone that long.”
“Trust me, you need it. You’ll sleep better in your own bed. And there’s absolutely nothing going on over there right now that Jethro can’t handle.”
“I know but—“
“Doctor’s orders. Get that nap. She does the heavy lifting on taking care of Kelly. You do the heavy lifting on taking care of her, and you can’t take care of her if you’re fried. Besides, I’m the one with the car, so you’re stuck there until I take you back. Might as well get a nap.”
“Did you and Gibbs plan this?”
Smug Jimmy.“Didn’t need to. That sofa in your room folds out into a bed. You’re out of it enough you haven’t figured that out. That means you aren’t safe to drive, and you really need some sleep.”
“Fine.”
Jimmy’s smiling as he watches the road.
“You’re looking awfully smug.”
Jimmy reached over and squeezed Tim’s shoulder. “Just enjoying this. Welcome to fatherhood.”
Tim laughed at that.
They got to Tim’s house, walked in, and Jimmy pointed up the stairs. “Go, sleep.”
And, well, yeah, bed felt good. Laying full out felt good. (He quickly reminded himself to give both Jimmy and Gibbs a headslap for not pointing out the sofa folded out, thus leaving him with a kink in his neck from sleeping on the too short sofa.) And for about a second he noticed that not worrying about needing to leap up and tend to Abby or Kelly was pretty nice too, but only for a second, because the second after that, he was asleep.
Waking up a few hours later, feeling like he’s been drugged and is trying to pull through a murky haze of physical and emotional tiredness, Tim realizes that part of what is happening is that humans are, more or less, diurnal.
And he’s adjusting to naps 24/7.
Laying in his bed, rubbing his eyes, he’s got no idea what time it is. Daytime, but it could be 10 in the morning or 5 in the afternoon.
But after a moment, he realized the nurse came in in the morning, gave Abby the all clear to get up, so it can’t be earlier than late morning. So he finally looked over, saw 2:55 on his clock, and realized he’d been asleep for four hours, and that Kelly was now a full day old.
Jimmy was right, he did sleep better in his own bed. Enough room to actually lie down was good. And that might be part of feeling drugged. He’d actually slept instead of dozing.
But he did slowly get up, and dressed, and snagged clothing for tomorrow. When they’d go home. Together.
He noticed something, he still had on Abby’s wedding and engagement ring. He shuffled through her collars, wrist cuffs, and other jewelry and found what he wanted, it’s a plain, white gold chain. He worked off her rings, threaded the necklace through them, and then put it around his neck. When he got back she could wear her rings again. One step closer to normal.
He headed into Kelly’s room, fingers resting on her crib. Tomorrow, afternoon maybe, she’d be sleeping in here.
He heard the footsteps, but didn’t turn until Jimmy put his hand on his shoulder. When Tim turned, he said, “Tomorrow.”
“Yep. Feeling better?”
“Nope. Feel like all my joints are glued together.”
Jimmy laughed a little. “That’ll be true every time you wake up for about two months.”
“Wonderful.” Tim held up the bundle of clothing he needed to put in his go bag. “I’m ready.”
“Let’s get you back, then.”
Tim turned toward the door and then noticed something. Previously the room had been set with the crib against the far wall, changing table/dresser on the wall to the left, rocking chair in the middle a few steps from the crib. But something new had wandered into the nursery.
It was one of those tray table things they’d gotten as wedding presents from Fornell.
And sitting on it was several bottles of water, some apples, protein bars, a little bowl with nuts, and a bag of M&Ms.
“Jimmy?” He knows he didn’t put it there, and he’s awfully sure there is no such thing as a snack fairy, which means Jimmy must have done it.
“Nursing mamas need to eat. A lot. Since she won’t be able to go up the stairs more than once a day for the first week, when she’s up here, she’ll be up here, can’t sprint down for munchies. And when you’re up here, you’ll hopefully be sleeping, and won’t want to be running down to fetch munchies. So, I stocked up the nursing station for the first shift. Did the same with your sofa. Wasn’t entirely sure where’d she want to be, but right now your sofa, right in the prime TV watching spot, is hers.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Breena’s mom did it for us while we were still in the hospital. I remembered Breena really appreciated that, so I did it for Abby.”
“Molly coming to visit today?”
“Breena’s bringing her over with dinner. She’s been babbling non-stop about the new baby. Can’t wait to see Kelly.”
They were in the car when Tim asked, “What’d you get?”
“Stuff you need. Stuff you don’t know you need.”
“Like what?”
“About six half gallons of ice cream, protein bars, fresh and dried fruit, lots of nuts, eggs, milk, basically lots of fat, calories, calcium and protein, all the building blocks of good milk. ‘Course, if Kelly’s allergic to any of this stuff, it’ll make her miserable, but let’s not try to jump that hurdle until you know if you need to or not.”
“Great.”
“Doubled your store of diapers, tripled baby wipes. Trust me, you’re gonna go through them way faster than you think you will. Cloth diapers.”
“We weren’t going to—“
“Not for that. Use them as spit up bibs/clothing protectors/handy wipes for anything that might come out of Kelly. They’re cheaper and more useful than seventy million paper towels. Think we’ve got like 100 of them and never seem to have too many, and we’ve never actually used one as a diaper.”
“All right.”
“Didn’t see any nursing pads, so I got them, too.”
“Some went with her to the hospital. Rest are in our room.”
“I know Breena was going to pick up some nursing bras for her. Can’t really get those ahead of time.”
“She told me they had that planned. So, what do I owe you?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Year from now, pay it down the line to Tony. Looks like they’re gonna be working on a little DiNozzo awfully soon.”
“Yeah, it does.”
When they got back, Gibbs was walking the halls with Kelly. She was awake, fussing a little, but not full out crying.
Gibbs handed her over without having to be asked, and said, “Just finished eating. The doc’s in doing a wound check for Abby.” Tim doesn’t need an explanation for why Gibbs didn’t stick around for that.
He takes Kelly, who decides this is a prime moment to go from fussing to full on crying, and heads back to their room, patting her back, shushing away. “Help me out, is this the I need to burp cry or the I’m sleepy cry?”
She cried louder. It wasn’t much help.
“Diaper change?”
Three more steps got them back to their room. The wound care specialist was in, checking Abby over, he caught the tail end of, “…everything looks good but if it gets red, hot, or starts leaking any sort of discharge you need to see your doctor.”
“Okay.”
The specialist looked up at Tim. “I was just telling your wife that everything looks fine…” and then proceeded to give him the full wound care instructions and things to look out for, as well. “We’ll do one more quick check tomorrow morning, but assuming everything looks fine, you’re going home tomorrow around lunch time.”
It’s a bit difficult to have a conversation with a small crying person in his arms, but he’s got the feeling the specialist has done this more than a few times before. So he nods, repeats back the instructions, and feels a general sense of pleasure at the idea of getting home with Abby and Kelly.
When the specialist left, he sat on the end of Abby’s bed. “Did she burp?”
“Yes.”
“Diaper changed?”
“Gibbs got it when she woke up.”
Tim grinned at that. “So he does change diapers.”
“He does when I give him puppy eyes about grabbing three more minutes of sleep.”
He outright laughed at that. Then laid Kelly on his legs, looking up at him, and said to her, “You’re fed and burped. Is all this about a wet diaper?” as he began unswaddling her and checked.
“Nope. Dry diaper. Sleepy?” He followed the how to swaddle directions and ended up with a very loosely wrapped baby who could kick her way out of the blankets.
Abby watched his efforts, not saying anything, but after a minute he handed Kelly over, and she did a… better job. Neither of them produced the perfectly smooth and snug bundle the nurses or Gibbs managed.
But, not having managed it, they stumbled onto the issue. Too hot. Babies might in general like having a snug little bundle to keep all their limbs in place, but they also don’t enjoy overheating. And having gotten a bit of extra ventilation, the crying stopped.
Abby took her cap off. “It’s what, ninety out there?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe she doesn’t need a hat.”
“Maybe not.” He noticed Abby was looking awfully sleepy. “I think we’re gonna get a walk. How about you get some more sleep?”
“That sounds really good.”
He kissed her and headed for the waiting room area. He doesn’t know how they set it up, but at any given time at least one someone who wants time with an awake Kelly will be out there.
Sarah. She sees him and smiles, and he goes to sit next to her.
Kelly’s laying on his lap, and he’s trying to get this swaddling thing worked out. He’s guessing a big chunk of the current fussing is based on little arms and legs flailing around and supposedly swaddling is the answer to that. It shouldn’t be hard, but for whatever reason the neat, tight little bundle the nurses and Gibbs and Jimmy and Breena can all produce with basically no effort at all turns into an adventure in remarkably ineffective origami when he’s in charge.
“You want me to do it?” Sarah asked.
“When have you ever swaddled a baby?”
“Let’s see… How about nine thousand times over the three years I was babysitting for the Millers?”
Getting better“Oh.” He tucked the blanket over Kelly, snugged it in close, and managed to get her into a rather lopsided bundle, but she at least wasn’t flailing anymore, and he could claim the hole at the bottom was additional ventilation for her so she didn’t overheat. “And no. I don’t want you to do it. I need to learn how to do this, and I’m not if you guys keep doing it for me.”“No problem.” She sits next to him, gently stroking her niece’s cheek. Kelly turns toward her, looking in her general direction, with an expression Tim thinks means, this is nice, where’s the milk? But it could also be, feeling sleepy or mild pique.
Understanding entirely non-verbal communication from someone he’s just met is tricky.
“So… Mom was pretty happy you sent her a picture of Kelly.”
He rose his eyebrows, feeling a little surprised. He hadn’t realized he’d done that, but thinking back, he knew she was on the family list and he hadn’t taken her off.
“I’m guessing by that look it wasn’t intentional.”
Tim shook his head. He picks Kelly off his lap and holds her close, his chin on the top of her head, feeling her in his arms, hands really, inhaling that sweet, milky, baby scent.
Sarah watches them, waiting to see if Tim will say anything, but he doesn’t, so she says, “What do you want me to do?”
“How do you mean?”
“With mom and dad. Penny filled me in and…” Sarah squeezed his shoulder. “Whatever you want or need. I’m here.”
“Oh.” They’d never gotten around to that lunch with Penny, so they haven’t talked about this, and to some degree he’d rather not. For another long moment he held Kelly, feeling the soft, warm weight of her against his skin, and with that comes a level of clarity. “He held you like this, you know… Well, not exactly like this, you were a few months old when he got back. But mom certainly did…”
“And you did.”
“Yeah. We were both a lot smaller then.” He sits there, holding Kelly, hearing her breathe and the soft, little chirpy sounds she’s making. “This sort of focuses things. They’re your parents, and they didn’t fuck you over, so… Do what you like. I’m not going to hold it against you or think less of you if you keep a relationship with them. I’m not going to make you pick, me or them.
“Not gonna do that to Penny, either. She did this, too, for him. Felt his fingers close around hers and fell instantly, unbreakably in love.” Her hand is out of the swaddle, and his finger strokes over the back of her hand, flits over her fingers, still amazed at how tiny her hand is, and feels four fingers clasp around his.
“What about you and them? Mom was pretty excited to get your text.”
“That was an accident. I forgot to take her contact off my family list… I’ll forgive her eventually. I’m angry, really angry, but I don’t want to cut her out completely. Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday and she should be here for this, but…” He lets it trail off. It hurts that she isn’t here, in a way he wasn’t expecting, but he knows that right now, seeing her would hurt even worse.
Sarah wraps her arm around him.
“Things will stay the same with Dad. Penny tells me that he asks you for updates on me, pictures and stuff… No pictures for him of Kelly or any other kids we may have. He doesn’t get to be anywhere near my children. He doesn’t get to know them, even second hand. That’s something you can do for me.”
“I can do that.”
“Maybe he’d be okay with Kelly, because she’s a girl, but I’m not risking it.”
“It’s okay. I won’t pass anything on. Won’t answer questions about you guys anymore.”
Sarah’s hand rests on his, her fingers between his on Kelly’s back. “He did this for you, too, you know?”
Tim closes his eyes, feeling those words, and the sensation, the emotions of this, brand new baby, his child, in his hands, and all the hopes and dreams and fears and love. “Yeah. I do. But it didn’t work. He didn’t fall in love with me. He fell in love with an idea.” He kissed the top of Kelly’s head, silently promising her that no matter who or what she wants to be, that he’ll be there for her. He looked back up at Sarah. “So, what are you going to do?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Watch him a lot more carefully if I have kids. I don’t think he’ll get to go on one on one sailing trips.”
“Good plan.”
“He’ll be stateside again in a few months, probably see him then.”
Tim nodded at that.
“What about you and him? Glen and I get married, can both of you be at the wedding?”
Tim shrugs. Spending time near his dad’s really low on his to do list. Napalming his sister’s chance at her daddy giving her away for her wedding also isn’t something he wants to do. “I promise you I will not start anything. I can’t promise I won’t end it if he does. I’m pretty much done with taking shit I don’t have to, and he’s at the top of the list of guys I’m not taking any more shit from. Last time I saw him we were in the same room for less than five minutes, with Gibbs, investigating a murder, and he still decided to make a few cracks about my weight and love life. I’ll play by the rules if he does, but if he doesn’t…” There’s something else he probably doesn’t need to be thinking about.
He shifts the topic, to something a little more relevant right this second. “So, are you and Glen getting married?
Sarah shrugged. “Talking about it, a little. Not entirely sure if he’s the one.”
“Unless you want to have five or six of these little dudes, I don’t think you need to rush.”
“Nah. How’d you know Abby was the one?”
“Spending almost a decade dating other people and having them come up short compared to her was a clue. But for that almost decade it didn’t much matter because she didn’t want the same thing I did, so I did date, and looked at other people, because we were never going to be happy if I kept wanting this,” and he kissed Kelly’s head, “and she kept wanting a collection of friends with benefits. I lucked out, eventually she decided she liked the idea of where I wanted to go, and agreed to go there with me. But that was just luck. It doesn’t work that way for a lot of people, maybe even most of them. So, is Glen the guy, or is there a guy who kind of looks like him that you haven’t found yet, or he hasn’t become yet?”
“Don’t know. Good question to think about.”
They sat together for a few more minutes. “You gonna tell me about your super top secret editor’s meeting?”
That got a smile out of Sarah. “Super top secret. Like, really, not to be spread around.”
“Who am I going to tell?”
“Your agent? Your publisher?”
“I’ll keep quiet.”
“In December I hand in the last of the Levi books, and with that my contract’s over. My editor, agent, and I are breaking off and starting our own imprint.”
Tim’s eyes went wide. “You’re starting your own publishing house?”
“Yeah. Multi-media, all web-based, all social media, podcasts, ebooks, mini-movies. We’re going to cater to the tumblr fans, and give them everything they want. Tons of content and we’ll run it as a subscription service, like cable. We’ll let the fans play, too, not just consume. Tons of fan created content. If we can get it off the ground, it’ll be awesome. Right now we’re setting up the list of authors we’re going to headhunt.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. You know who Amanda Hawking is?”
“The little girl who wrote those troll books? Sold a million of them on Amazon before she was twenty-six?”
“Yeah. We’re studying her playbook, and going to work it, but with professional production values.”
“Very cool.”
“I really hope so.”
“And you’re the brand name star?”
“One of them.”
“You’ve got takers?”
“A few.”
Tim smiled at that, very happy for Sarah. She stroked Kelly’s cheek. “I think she’s asleep.”
“Then we’re going to go lay down.”
“Good plan, you look like you need a nap.”
This time, he headed back to their room, gently put Kelly in her bassinet and noticed that yes, the sofa did fold out, so he spread it out and got to lie all the way down and that was a whole lot better than trying to sleep sitting down on it.
“Feel like another visitor?” Breena’s voice this time, though he’s heard a variation on that question from everyone in the family now.
“Sure,” Abby says, which was when he really woke up enough to notice she was up and nursing Kelly.He noticed the scent of egg rolls and broccoli and chicken, and sat up rubbing his eyes. “Visitors with food are especially welcome.”
“You have to be really gentle with Aunt Abby and Kelly,” Jimmy says to Molly as they walk in. She’s in his arms. Yes, she can walk, but these days seems to have two speeds, running like crazy or ambling along at toddler speed, which is really, really slow.
So, assuming they want to get somewhere and not have her get into everything around/bump into other people, Jimmy usually carries her.
Molly’s nodding at that, eyes wide, bright smile on her face, Jimmy and Breena’s smiles wrapped together and amped through the innocent joy of a life untouched by any real sorrow. Tim felt around for his phone and started to film this, figuring that they’d all want footage of the first time the girls met.
“Baby!”
“Yep. There she is.” Jimmy gently put Molly down on Abby’s bed, next to Abby, who was holding Kelly. He kept a hand on her, ready to yank her back fast if need be, but letting her get close on her own.
“Baby!”
“Molly, this is Kelly,” Abby said.
Kelly kicked free of the blanket and Molly saw her foot. Thin little foot, narrow sole, tiny toes. She looked at it, very gently, very slowly traced her finger over Kelly’s foot, said, “Baby foots,” and started to laugh.
Tim felt himself laugh in answer. Abby smiled, might have wanted to laugh, but that hurts too much right now. Jimmy kissed the top of Molly’s head, and Breena grinned at her.
“You were that size when you were born,” Breena said to Molly.
“No.” Molly’s shaking her head emphatically. The idea that people change, that she’s been changing is just way beyond Molly’s 16 month old mind.
“Okay. You’ve always been this size,” Breena said while setting down the food.
Tim almost says something like your little brother or sister will be this size, but remembers that Jimmy and Breena haven’t told Molly about the new baby yet. Mostly because she just won’t really get it. Plus the idea of waiting six months is another thing completely beyond her sixteen-month-old mind.
Jimmy’s taking her shoes off and then holds Molly’s foot up to Kelly’s foot. “See how much bigger you are?”
That Molly gets. She’s about twenty-five pounds now, and compared to Kelly looks like a giant. Though three days ago Tim was awfully convinced that Molly was the tiniest little baby girl on Earth.
Kelly finishes the breast she’d been working on, and Abby holds her up to burp. Molly inches a little closer, standing, little wobbly (Jimmy still has a hand on her, making sure she won’t fall into Kelly or Abby) and kisses Kelly’s forehead. Kelly twists her head and sort of squints at her.
For a second there, you could feel the collective ‘Oh How Cute!’ from all the adults.
Molly, after being toldshe couldn't play with
the remote.Then Molly noticed the remote to Abby’s bed, and that was the coolest thing ever, which resulted in some less than happy moments while she had a bit of a melt down over not being able to play with it. And Kelly started fussing, having to burp and not burping is uncomfortable and this whole eating thing was a lot easier when the food was just directly deposited through her umbilical cord.
And like with everything else in life, the precious moments are just moments, and parenthood is a whole lot more cleaning up messes and managing the desires of small people than basking in the glow of cute baby joy.
And so, the four of them, now all parents, got to it.
Next
October 12, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 233
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 233: Coming Down
The thing about morphine is that it feels really good. It’s a good painkiller too, which is why they use it for major surgeries. What’s not obvious is how much pain it’s killing. The other thing that isn’t obvious is how much of that euphoric feeling good is because of the morphine.
So, on the day Kelly was born, Abby was feeling super-duper spiffy, and really, was awfully impressed by how great she was doing with this whole just-had-a-baby-thing. Yeah, she was sore. (Especially her right shoulder, that really hurt. They told her that was a side effect of trapped air in her abdomen, but she was on morphine so the idea of air trapped in her abdomen and having to wait for it to be absorbed didn’t bother her, at all.) And no, she didn’t even want to think about doing anything that involved her abs, but for the most part this was nowhere near as bad as she thought it was going to be.
All in all, really, she was feeling awfully good.
Which is why morphine is an especially nasty double edged sword.
So as the morphine began to wear off, Abby didn’t opt for nearly as many of the other painkillers as she should have. Because when the nurse asked about her pain on a one to ten level she figured she was at a two, so she didn’t need much to deal with this, right?
Wrong.
By the morning, everything in the universe sucked. There was not an iota of morphine left in her system, whatever they were giving her to combat the pain was fighting way, way, way out of its weight class, the chemical euphoria the morphine provided had gone, and the tsunami-sized waves of post-partum baby blues hormones were starting to crash into her.
So, in the course of one day, she had gone from everything is as good as good can be, nothing hurts, new baby, wrapped in ecstasy and love to the entire world and everything in it is one horrible drudge of unrelenting physical and emotional pain.
The nurse came in again, once again asking about pain levels, adjusted the dosage she was on, so supposedly soon she’d be hurting less, but then, because apparently this women was utterly insane, she unhooked Abby from all the tubes and asked her to get up and walk around a little.
So, she did, and fucking God that hurt! While she was up, tottering around a little, she got to see the vast, bloody mess that was the pad she’d been lying on, and the idea of exactly how ruined her body might be came crashing into her.
She felt the tears in her eyes, and the nurse smiled at her gently, said to her, “Do you want to get a shower? You’ll probably feel a little better when you’re all cleaned up.”
Abby nodded, numbly, and headed toward the bathroom. Shower did sound good, but as she stood in the little bathroom, slowly peeling off her gown, she got to see how she looked.
And burst into sobbing tears.
She just felt ruined. That’s the only word for it. There’s an image of a woman she has in her mind, the woman she is, and this beaten down, swollen, bruised, blood smeared, exhausted body staring back at her in the mirror is not that woman.
It’s not even a ghost of that woman.
Or her shadow.
It’s just the used up dregs of a destroyed vessel.
She’s staring at the wreckage of her body, feeling like every shred of her intrinsic Abbyness was gone. She doesn’t even smell like herself. There’s this cloying, sweetish blood smell that’s suddenly making her want to rip her skin off in an attempt to get away from it.
She heard a soft knock on the door, and wanted to say stay away, but couldn’t get her voice together well enough to do it, so after a second Tim stepped in, and she winced as his eyes hit her body, not wanting him to see this ruin of who she used to be.
He smiled gently at her, and pulled her into his arms.
Tim heard the crying about a minute after Abby slowly, carefully headed to the little bathroom attached to their room. The nurse had said she could get a shower, and she certainly wanted one, so in she had gone.And he remembered the thing about baby blues, and even if he hadn’t remembered if from their somewhat shortened series of Lamaze classes, both the nurses and Dr. Draz have mentioned it in the last day so he gets that her crying might be normal, but just because it’s normal doesn’t mean he wants her sitting alone in a room crying.
He looks at Gibbs (who had just come back in. He has a tendency to wander off whenever one of the nurses or doctors is doing anything with Abby) and his daughter and says, “Can you…?” holding Kelly toward him.
“Tim, snuggling a baby girl is never going to be a job I’ll turn down. Especially if it frees you up to deal with the crying woman.”
“Thanks.”
He knocked gently on the door. “Can I come in?”
No answer, just quiet sobbing. He decided that was a yes.
So he eased the door open and found Abby standing in front of the mirror sobbing. “Hey.” He took one step to her and wrapped her in his arms, holding her and petting her back.
She cried harder, and he didn’t ask what was wrong. His best guess, that she does look like she was hit by a truck, isn’t going to be helpful at all. Holding onto her, being there, cuddling against her, that’s helpful (or so he hopes.)
After several minutes of that, she starts to pull it back together, calming down a little. He kisses her forehead. “You still want to get that shower?”
She nods.
“Want some company? I’ll wash your hair.”
She nods at that, more tears starting in her eyes. He lifts her face and kisses each eyelid. “Love you so much.” Then he reaches over to turn the water on and quickly strips out of his clothing.
He looks down at the bandage over her wound. “Does that need to come off before you go in?”
“Just the top part.”
“Top part?”
“I don’t know.” She carefully peeled the pad off the incision site. It didn’t look nearly as bad as Tim was afraid, about six inches across, two lines of skin pressed closed with a collection of small pieces of tape. It was… surprisingly bloodless. Which given the blood on her legs, the yellow, bruised scabs on her arms and back from the IVs/epidural, the stippled, purple-blue bruises on her skin where they peeled off the tape that had held those tubes in place, the scarlet stretch marks, which apparently decided to come out in force all over her belly and hips and breasts over the last twenty-four hours, and the fact that everything is swollen and puffy, StayPuff marshmallow puffy, (he’s actually still wearing her wedding and engagement ring because she’s so swollen she can’t get them back onto her own fingers) was actually a nice surprise. Good to see at least one of these things wasn’t a total horror show.
He tested the water, “It’s good,” and stepped in, helping her in. It’s not like it’s a hard climb or anything, but an extra hand is probably useful.
She sighed when the water hit her.
“Good?”
“Yeah. Feels good. I feel like someone beat the hell out of me, and this is good.”
“Okay.”
For a long minute he stood there, holding onto her, letting the water slip over both of them, just feeling her in his arms. He looked around, didn’t see her soap or shampoo, and realized it had to be either on the sink or still in the go bag.
He started to step back, but she followed, so he spent a few more minutes just hugging her, but eventually she said, “Did I forget the soap?”
“I think so. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay.”
Gibbs looked mildly surprised when he hopped out of the bathroom a few seconds later soaking wet with a towel around his hips, but didn’t say anything when Tim snagged the go bag, rummaged through it, grabbed a scrubby and three bottles, and vanished back into the bathroom.
“Got ‘em.”
“Good.”
He stepped back in, balanced the toiletries on the handrail, taking the shampoo in hand and pouring some into his palm.
“Wasn’t there something you were going to be doing now?” she asked, leaning against him, sighing with pleasure, relieved to see some things, like his fingers rubbing into her scalp, still feel good. Still feel like her.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll get round to it sooner or later.”
She smiled at that. “Kelly sleeping?”
“Maybe. She wasn’t making any noise and was snuggled on Jethro’s tummy.”
“Okay.” Another long sigh from her.
“Feel good?”
“Yeah. Nice to know at least my hair’s still mine.”
He doesn’t quite get that, but doesn’t exactly know how to expound on that either. So he lets the water rinse away the shampoo, and grabs the scrubby, “Do your legs for you?” He figures it can’t be easy to do anything that involves bending right now, or using her abs, and he’s fairly sure washing her legs has to involve one or the other of those options.
“Sure.”
Kneeling down, washing her legs and feet, he’s coming face to face with what “moderate bleeding” means, and is trying to not freak out about it, because while the docs and nurses have all said this is normal, and the pads Breena brought for Abby were certainly awfully thick, the idea that this much blood might be coming out of Abby is making him want to hyperventilate, and he’s fairly sure that isn’t a good thing for anyone.
So it wasn’t the most thorough wash ever, but he got the job done, stood up fast, and asked, “Did you bring fresh clothing in?”
Abby slumped a little more, just one more layer of everything sucks on top of all of the other ones, and he kissed her.
“Painkillers, baby, anyone would forget.”
That got a nod out of her.
And once again, he headed out, wrapped in a towel, grabbed the go bag, and then smiled. Once he was back in the bathroom he said, “At least you remembered to pack fresh clothing. Totally slipped my mind.”
That got a little laugh out of her as she stepped out of the shower.
“You feeling a little better?”
“Little. Can you get my legs and feet again?”
“Sure.” He gently dried her off and helped her get dressed.
When she was dressed, he said, “Go snuggle with Gibbs, I need a minute,” and if she took that to mean he needed some bathroom time on his own, that was fine, that was better than fine.
She nodded and headed out, and he quietly let himself melt down over how much blood there was. Smears of it on her legs, and a pink ring around the drain in the shower, and the wet, red stains on the towel, and it was just a whole lot of blood. And he knows she’s fine. He knows they keep checking her iron levels, and he knows it’s supposed to happen, but it’s still a whole lot of blood, Abby’s blood, all over the place, and it’s just really, really hard.
He’s shaking all over and wants to throw up.
And eventually he got his breathing back to normal, and got over the desire to throw up, got himself dressed again (in the same clothing) and headed out, finding Gibbs on the sofa, little baby girl sleeping on his chest, bigger girl leaning against him, arm around her shoulders, also asleep.
Gibbs looked at Tim, caught the fact that he was feeling pretty low right now, and said, “Go home for a bit, get some fresh clothing. Take Jimmy, I think he’s in the waiting room. I’ve got ‘em.”
Tim nodded. “You need anything?”
“I’m good.”
In the waiting room.Jimmy was hanging out in the waiting room, when Tim headed out. He saw the look on Tim’s face as he sat down next to him, and said, “What happened?”
Tim shook his head. “Helped her get washed off.” He swallowed hard. “It was a lot of blood.”
Jimmy nodded, smiled gently, very much understanding the pain of seeing your love hurting, damaged, and unable to do anything about it. “Yeah. I know. It’s normal.”
Tim nodded back. “Gibbs told me to go home, get some clean clothing.”
“Good plan. I’ll drive. We’ll get some more food on the way back. Bet Abby’ll want some real food soon.”
“Probably.”
Next
Chapter 233: Coming Down
The thing about morphine is that it feels really good. It’s a good painkiller too, which is why they use it for major surgeries. What’s not obvious is how much pain it’s killing. The other thing that isn’t obvious is how much of that euphoric feeling good is because of the morphine.
So, on the day Kelly was born, Abby was feeling super-duper spiffy, and really, was awfully impressed by how great she was doing with this whole just-had-a-baby-thing. Yeah, she was sore. (Especially her right shoulder, that really hurt. They told her that was a side effect of trapped air in her abdomen, but she was on morphine so the idea of air trapped in her abdomen and having to wait for it to be absorbed didn’t bother her, at all.) And no, she didn’t even want to think about doing anything that involved her abs, but for the most part this was nowhere near as bad as she thought it was going to be.
All in all, really, she was feeling awfully good.
Which is why morphine is an especially nasty double edged sword.
So as the morphine began to wear off, Abby didn’t opt for nearly as many of the other painkillers as she should have. Because when the nurse asked about her pain on a one to ten level she figured she was at a two, so she didn’t need much to deal with this, right?
Wrong.
By the morning, everything in the universe sucked. There was not an iota of morphine left in her system, whatever they were giving her to combat the pain was fighting way, way, way out of its weight class, the chemical euphoria the morphine provided had gone, and the tsunami-sized waves of post-partum baby blues hormones were starting to crash into her.
So, in the course of one day, she had gone from everything is as good as good can be, nothing hurts, new baby, wrapped in ecstasy and love to the entire world and everything in it is one horrible drudge of unrelenting physical and emotional pain.
The nurse came in again, once again asking about pain levels, adjusted the dosage she was on, so supposedly soon she’d be hurting less, but then, because apparently this women was utterly insane, she unhooked Abby from all the tubes and asked her to get up and walk around a little.
So, she did, and fucking God that hurt! While she was up, tottering around a little, she got to see the vast, bloody mess that was the pad she’d been lying on, and the idea of exactly how ruined her body might be came crashing into her.
She felt the tears in her eyes, and the nurse smiled at her gently, said to her, “Do you want to get a shower? You’ll probably feel a little better when you’re all cleaned up.”
Abby nodded, numbly, and headed toward the bathroom. Shower did sound good, but as she stood in the little bathroom, slowly peeling off her gown, she got to see how she looked.
And burst into sobbing tears.
She just felt ruined. That’s the only word for it. There’s an image of a woman she has in her mind, the woman she is, and this beaten down, swollen, bruised, blood smeared, exhausted body staring back at her in the mirror is not that woman.
It’s not even a ghost of that woman.
Or her shadow.
It’s just the used up dregs of a destroyed vessel.
She’s staring at the wreckage of her body, feeling like every shred of her intrinsic Abbyness was gone. She doesn’t even smell like herself. There’s this cloying, sweetish blood smell that’s suddenly making her want to rip her skin off in an attempt to get away from it.
She heard a soft knock on the door, and wanted to say stay away, but couldn’t get her voice together well enough to do it, so after a second Tim stepped in, and she winced as his eyes hit her body, not wanting him to see this ruin of who she used to be.
He smiled gently at her, and pulled her into his arms.
Tim heard the crying about a minute after Abby slowly, carefully headed to the little bathroom attached to their room. The nurse had said she could get a shower, and she certainly wanted one, so in she had gone.And he remembered the thing about baby blues, and even if he hadn’t remembered if from their somewhat shortened series of Lamaze classes, both the nurses and Dr. Draz have mentioned it in the last day so he gets that her crying might be normal, but just because it’s normal doesn’t mean he wants her sitting alone in a room crying.
He looks at Gibbs (who had just come back in. He has a tendency to wander off whenever one of the nurses or doctors is doing anything with Abby) and his daughter and says, “Can you…?” holding Kelly toward him.
“Tim, snuggling a baby girl is never going to be a job I’ll turn down. Especially if it frees you up to deal with the crying woman.”
“Thanks.”
He knocked gently on the door. “Can I come in?”
No answer, just quiet sobbing. He decided that was a yes.
So he eased the door open and found Abby standing in front of the mirror sobbing. “Hey.” He took one step to her and wrapped her in his arms, holding her and petting her back.
She cried harder, and he didn’t ask what was wrong. His best guess, that she does look like she was hit by a truck, isn’t going to be helpful at all. Holding onto her, being there, cuddling against her, that’s helpful (or so he hopes.)
After several minutes of that, she starts to pull it back together, calming down a little. He kisses her forehead. “You still want to get that shower?”
She nods.
“Want some company? I’ll wash your hair.”
She nods at that, more tears starting in her eyes. He lifts her face and kisses each eyelid. “Love you so much.” Then he reaches over to turn the water on and quickly strips out of his clothing.
He looks down at the bandage over her wound. “Does that need to come off before you go in?”
“Just the top part.”
“Top part?”
“I don’t know.” She carefully peeled the pad off the incision site. It didn’t look nearly as bad as Tim was afraid, about six inches across, two lines of skin pressed closed with a collection of small pieces of tape. It was… surprisingly bloodless. Which given the blood on her legs, the yellow, bruised scabs on her arms and back from the IVs/epidural, the stippled, purple-blue bruises on her skin where they peeled off the tape that had held those tubes in place, the scarlet stretch marks, which apparently decided to come out in force all over her belly and hips and breasts over the last twenty-four hours, and the fact that everything is swollen and puffy, StayPuff marshmallow puffy, (he’s actually still wearing her wedding and engagement ring because she’s so swollen she can’t get them back onto her own fingers) was actually a nice surprise. Good to see at least one of these things wasn’t a total horror show.
He tested the water, “It’s good,” and stepped in, helping her in. It’s not like it’s a hard climb or anything, but an extra hand is probably useful.
She sighed when the water hit her.
“Good?”
“Yeah. Feels good. I feel like someone beat the hell out of me, and this is good.”
“Okay.”
For a long minute he stood there, holding onto her, letting the water slip over both of them, just feeling her in his arms. He looked around, didn’t see her soap or shampoo, and realized it had to be either on the sink or still in the go bag.
He started to step back, but she followed, so he spent a few more minutes just hugging her, but eventually she said, “Did I forget the soap?”
“I think so. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay.”
Gibbs looked mildly surprised when he hopped out of the bathroom a few seconds later soaking wet with a towel around his hips, but didn’t say anything when Tim snagged the go bag, rummaged through it, grabbed a scrubby and three bottles, and vanished back into the bathroom.
“Got ‘em.”
“Good.”
He stepped back in, balanced the toiletries on the handrail, taking the shampoo in hand and pouring some into his palm.
“Wasn’t there something you were going to be doing now?” she asked, leaning against him, sighing with pleasure, relieved to see some things, like his fingers rubbing into her scalp, still feel good. Still feel like her.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll get round to it sooner or later.”
She smiled at that. “Kelly sleeping?”
“Maybe. She wasn’t making any noise and was snuggled on Jethro’s tummy.”
“Okay.” Another long sigh from her.
“Feel good?”
“Yeah. Nice to know at least my hair’s still mine.”
He doesn’t quite get that, but doesn’t exactly know how to expound on that either. So he lets the water rinse away the shampoo, and grabs the scrubby, “Do your legs for you?” He figures it can’t be easy to do anything that involves bending right now, or using her abs, and he’s fairly sure washing her legs has to involve one or the other of those options.
“Sure.”
Kneeling down, washing her legs and feet, he’s coming face to face with what “moderate bleeding” means, and is trying to not freak out about it, because while the docs and nurses have all said this is normal, and the pads Breena brought for Abby were certainly awfully thick, the idea that this much blood might be coming out of Abby is making him want to hyperventilate, and he’s fairly sure that isn’t a good thing for anyone.
So it wasn’t the most thorough wash ever, but he got the job done, stood up fast, and asked, “Did you bring fresh clothing in?”
Abby slumped a little more, just one more layer of everything sucks on top of all of the other ones, and he kissed her.
“Painkillers, baby, anyone would forget.”
That got a nod out of her.
And once again, he headed out, wrapped in a towel, grabbed the go bag, and then smiled. Once he was back in the bathroom he said, “At least you remembered to pack fresh clothing. Totally slipped my mind.”
That got a little laugh out of her as she stepped out of the shower.
“You feeling a little better?”
“Little. Can you get my legs and feet again?”
“Sure.” He gently dried her off and helped her get dressed.
When she was dressed, he said, “Go snuggle with Gibbs, I need a minute,” and if she took that to mean he needed some bathroom time on his own, that was fine, that was better than fine.
She nodded and headed out, and he quietly let himself melt down over how much blood there was. Smears of it on her legs, and a pink ring around the drain in the shower, and the wet, red stains on the towel, and it was just a whole lot of blood. And he knows she’s fine. He knows they keep checking her iron levels, and he knows it’s supposed to happen, but it’s still a whole lot of blood, Abby’s blood, all over the place, and it’s just really, really hard.
He’s shaking all over and wants to throw up.
And eventually he got his breathing back to normal, and got over the desire to throw up, got himself dressed again (in the same clothing) and headed out, finding Gibbs on the sofa, little baby girl sleeping on his chest, bigger girl leaning against him, arm around her shoulders, also asleep.
Gibbs looked at Tim, caught the fact that he was feeling pretty low right now, and said, “Go home for a bit, get some fresh clothing. Take Jimmy, I think he’s in the waiting room. I’ve got ‘em.”
Tim nodded. “You need anything?”
“I’m good.”
In the waiting room.Jimmy was hanging out in the waiting room, when Tim headed out. He saw the look on Tim’s face as he sat down next to him, and said, “What happened?”Tim shook his head. “Helped her get washed off.” He swallowed hard. “It was a lot of blood.”
Jimmy nodded, smiled gently, very much understanding the pain of seeing your love hurting, damaged, and unable to do anything about it. “Yeah. I know. It’s normal.”
Tim nodded back. “Gibbs told me to go home, get some clean clothing.”
“Good plan. I’ll drive. We’ll get some more food on the way back. Bet Abby’ll want some real food soon.”
“Probably.”
Next
October 11, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 232
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 232: Family
Gibbs stands quietly in front of the door. He listens carefully and doesn’t hear anything on the other side, so he doesn’t knock. He opens it, peeks in, and then slips through, walking silently.
They’re sleeping. Which he expected. He knows he and Shannon certainly crashed pretty quickly after the excitement was over, and he figured Abby and Tim would, too.
Even without hours of labor, or a terrifying and painful emergency C-section, just the days, weeks of waiting are exhausting.
He walks over to Abby, lying in a hospital bed. Hospital gown, exhausted sleep, IV tubes, all of that looks familiar, but it’s the smell, that sweet combination of blood and amniotic fluids with an undertone of Lysol that whips him back in time by more than thirty years.
He blinks, clears his eyes, and kisses her on the forehead. She murmurs something, shifts a little, and settles back into sleep.
Tim’s crashed out on the sofa. It’s too short for him to lay across it, so he’s sprawled out, head lolling on the backrest, both hands protectively clasped around the tiny bundle snoozing on his chest.
Gibbs gently sits next to him, looking at their little girl. Or not snoozing. Two bleary blue eyes are wide open and staring around.
“Hi,” he says it very quietly, finger tracing down Kelly’s cheek, the feel of her skin under his finger also whipping him back in time, and Tim stirs, opening one eye. “Go back to sleep, Tim. I’m going to take her for a walk.”
For a second Tim’s hands close a little more tightly around his daughter, and then he seems to realize it’s Gibbs, so he mumbles something like, “Okay,” and closes his eye again.
Gibbs gently picks up Kelly, cradling her against his chest, and heads into the hallway. Once out there he says, “Let’s let your parents get some sleep. They’ll need it.” He’s bouncing her a little as they walk, humming something tuneless.
He’s amazed at how this brings him back. It’s been thirty-three years since he held his daughter for the first time, and right now he’d tell you it was yesterday.
He kisses the top of her head, memories of kissing his own Kelly like this bright in his mind. “You were named after two incredible girls, Kelly Marie, and one day, when you’re a bit bigger, I’m going to tell you all about them.”
Right now he’s the only one at the hospital. Sometimes it’s good to be the Boss. Tony, Ziva, and Draga are still on the case, though at last update Sharpe had fallen for the Prisoner’s dilemma, and Tony was just on clean up with his confession.
Meanwhile, once Ziva and Draga got back, they’d have a signed confession to show Harper, so that should break him pretty fast.
Ducky and Jimmy had agreed to both stay at Autopsy. Working together they can finish everything up faster and get here that much sooner, and more importantly, stay that much longer. He hasn’t heard anything from Breena, but assumes she and Molly will be coming soon.
And yeah, it’s not Jimmy’s meet your little brother fantasy, but meet your cousin will be awfully good, too.
He identifies the dark-haired woman walking toward him by her stride and attitude before he can make out the details of her face, after all, his glasses are in his pocket.
Penny.
She stops in front of him. “Is that her?”
Okay, it’s a kind of dumb question. Not like he’d be here, walking the hall with someone else’s kid. But it’s easy to get rattled when you’re excited, and he might have just as easily asked her the same thing if she’d gotten here first.
“Yeah. They’re getting a nap, so we’re getting a walk.” He stands at an angle so she can see her great-granddaughter’s face.
She pets Kelly, a wide, happy grin that puts him very strongly in mind of Tim on her face. “She’s the spitting image of Sarah.”
Abby looked like thisThat confuses Gibbs. He was thinking this is what Abby must have looked like as a baby. He shifts his hold, cradling her so he can look at her face, finding a place to sit down so he can really look at her. He slips the little crocheted cap off her head, finding a fine fuzz of blond hair.
“Abby. Abby looked like this as a baby.”
Penelope sits next to him, leaning over, staring at her. “Maybe. I still think she looks like her aunt.” She fits the cap back on Kelly’s head. “Did you get any details?”
“Nah. They were both asleep when I came in. Got the same text you did.”
She smiles at that. “They look okay?”
“As okay as two exhausted, sleeping people can.”
That gets a laugh out of Penny.
Gibbs realizes Kelly hasn’t been properly introduced. “Kelly, this is your great-grandma.” He looks up from the baby to Tim’s grandmother. “What is she going to call you?”
“Penny. They all do.”
He nods. “Kelly, this is Penny. And when you can talk, you can call me Pop.”
“Can I hold her?” Just like Tim, he feels his hands curl around this little girl, not wanting to let her go. But he forces them to relax, he’s got to share.
“Sure.”
Penny cradles Kelly to her shoulder. “God, it comes back. I haven’t done this since James was a baby.”
“James?”
“Tim’s youngest second cousin. Three years.”
“I was thinking the same thing. But thirty-three years for me.”
Penny nods. Kelly begins to squawk, and Penny bounces her gently, patting her back, making shushing noises.
“She’s been awake a while. I’m thinking it’s naptime for her.” Gibbs holds out his hands, wanting to take her back, but Penelope doesn’t look like she wants to let go.
“You got to carry her out. I can take her back in. Show me where their room is.”
“Okay.”
Penny stands up, her chin pressed against the top of her head. She pats Kelly’s back, walking with a little bounce in her step. Gibbs watches, approving of her technique, and Kelly starts to settle down.
“It comes back easy, doesn’t it?”
Gibbs nods at that.
They sneak into Tim and Abby’s room. Penny lays her down in the clear plastic bassinette next to Abby’s bed. He kisses Abby once more, whispering, “She’s beautiful, Abbs,” and heads back into the hallway.
A second after the door shuts, Penny’s phone buzzes. She takes it, and Gibbs hears, “Hello. Yes… Just saw her… Room 207, but everyone is sleeping now, so maybe an hour or so is a good idea... Uh huh... Call when you get here.” And then hangs up the phone.
“Who was that?”
“Sarah. She just got the message. Tim isn’t answering his phone, so she called me.”
Gibbs nods. “Get some coffee?”
“That sounds good.”
They’re in the cafeteria, at a table, with no coffee. Several seconds after stepping in and smelling the coffee, both Gibbs and Penny had opted for other beverages.
Gibbs sips his. “Anyone tell his parents?”
“John calls every few weeks. I’ll tell him the next time we talk. And I don’t know if it’s habit or if things are getting better, but he sent that text to Tori, too.”
“You’re still talking to John?”
Penny shrugged. “Arguing. Yelling. Trying to pound it through that thick, stubborn head of his that what he and Tori did was not appropriate. She got it. Or is smart enough to pretend to get it. Or at least was crying when I got off the phone with her. But she’s also never been disappointed in Tim. He’s still firmly convinced he didn’t go far enough because he couldn’t turn Tim into a sailor.”
Gibbs feels himself tense at that. “And if yelling doesn’t do it?”
Penny’s holding her coffee tightly and stares up at the ceiling, then looks back to Gibbs and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’d like to think I know what I’d do. I know what I did in the past. Joining the peace movement could have killed Nelson’s career, and he wasn’t thrilled about me doing it, but when he saw what we were building... That wasn’t warfare. It wasn’t honorable, and it wasn’t about defending people. He didn’t stand in my way, but if he had, I would have gone.
“John’s my son, and if he can’t… If I need to, I’ll let him go.”
Gibbs nods at that.
Penny takes another sip of her tea. “This is almost as bad as the coffee smells.”
Gibbs sees her change the subject, and since there’s nothing else to add, he goes with it, taking a sip of his own drink. He has lemonade, which he suspects has never met a real lemon, or real sugar, and it’s entirely possible even the water is artificial. “You think they feed this to the patients?”
“I really hope not,” Penny says, getting her phone out and texting.
Gibbs raises an eyebrow at her, and then a few seconds later her phone chimes with a return text. “Doesn’t matter if this is what they feed them or not. I’ve got Ducky and Jimmy on bringing real, delicious, and nutritionally appropriate food for them.”
That got a smile out of Gibbs.
The rest of what he’s taken to thinking of as the Mallard branch of the family showed up next, without Molly.
He flashed Jimmy a curious look as Penny hugged Breena, and he said, “She’s still at daycare. She’ll want to hop all over Abby as soon as she sees her, so waiting until all the tubes are out is a good plan. Tomorrow or the next, we’ll bring her.”
Gibbs nods. Granted, he hadn’t thought about that, but it made sense.
“Are they receiving visitors?” Ducky asked.
“Everyone was asleep when we were last in there, but I’d imagine quietly poking your head in to check wouldn’t be a problem,” Penny replied.
“I’ll go.” And Gibbs was off, headed toward their room, so he missed the smiles passing between Jimmy and Breena and Penny and Ducky.
This time when he got nearer to the door he could hear quiet crying and voices, so he poked his head in and said, “Feel like some company?”
“Sure,” Tim said, mid-diaper change. Which was apparently the reason why Kelly was crying.
“Gibbs! Oh, you’re here! Have you seen her, yet? She’s beautiful!”
Gibbs paused next to Tim to tickle Kelly’s tummy, which didn’t stop the crying, but did make her look away from Tim to him, and then took two more steps to Abby, kissing her gently. “Yeah, Abbs. She is beautiful. I was in here two hours ago. You were asleep. Kelly and I went for a quick walk, met Penny while we were out there. She thinks Kelly looks like Tim’s sister.”
Tim stares at his daughter, and tries to remember back, but the image of what Sarah looked like brand new just isn’t forming in his mind. “She might. Can’t really remember, right now.” Then he finished wiping her off, and got the new diaper on and snug, followed by the onesie, which Kelly seemed to appreciate, because she stopped crying.
“All nice and warm now?” Tim asked her, picking her up and taking her over to Abby. “So who’s here?” he asked Gibbs as Abby started getting ready to nurse.
“Penny, Ducky, Breena and Jimmy, Sarah should be here any minute, and whenever they get Harper taken care of Tony and Ziva will be along,” he answers, keeping up a very tight line of direct eye contact with Tim. Since Molly, he’s been aware of the fact that one of the biggest changes since he was a dad with a baby is that these days the girls will just whip out a breast and nurse babies like it’s no big deal.
And on an intellectual level he gets it. First and foremost it’s a sign that he’s family and part of the inner circle. Because while they will nurse in public, this is a lot less stealthy than how they behave when out and about.
And he can understand that it can’t be fun to have to excuse yourself from whatever is going on to feed the baby. And beyond all that, if anyone is going to leave because of nursing, he’s the one with the two working feet who didn’t just get cut open five hours ago, so he’d be the one to leave the room.
So, yes, he understands this and how it works.
And he doesn’t want to leave, but… okay, it’s still a little squirmy. So like with when Molly was getting a snack, he is keeping up a very strict not looking policy.
He’s staring at Tim, filling him in with how the prisoner’s dilemma worked, when Abby said to him, giggling, because apparently everything is awfully funny to her right now, “It’s okay Gibbs, you can look. You don’t have to pretend I’m not nursing. This is what they’re for.”
And, okay, looking back his reaction probably wasn’t the most mature thing he’d ever done. Or the kindest. And he was aware of the fact that Abby had to be on some sort of painkiller, but it hadn’t really hit him that she didn’t have any filters between her brain and her mouth.
But he is kind of uncomfortable, and he’s awfully good at spreading uncomfortable around. And, honestly, kind of giddy on grandbaby joy. So, still keeping up eye contact with Tim, he very gently smacked him upside the head and said, “If she thinks that’swhat those are for, you aren’t doing your job.”
“Gibbs!” Abby sounded utterly horrified. “Oh no you don’t! You apologize to McGee right this second! If there was ever a man who knew his way around a breast it’s McGee. He’s practically a lesbian he’s so good with them. Some guys just don’t get it, they pinch and twist, like the dials on those old radios, you remember them, right? Of course you do, you’re old enough to remember those radios, but not McGee, not that you don’t remember those radios, do you? Off topic. He gets that different parts of the breast respond to touch differently, and he knows how to use the texture of my clothing to play with me, and you know nipples respond to touch differently than the flesh around them, and he figured out how to do this thing with his teeth, and how the flat part of the tooth feels different than the sharp part, and since I’ve been pregnant my nipples have been really sensitive-- Do you have sensitive nipples, Gibbs? Anyway, he figured out that he could do this thing with his eyelashes, oh my god, if you’ve got sensitive nipples, you’ve got to get someone to try it on you, feels—“
Which was when Tim finally jerked out of the frozen, watching-the-train-wreck-happening-but-unable-to-do-anything-about-it,-blushing-so-hard-his-hair-was-going-to-turn-red space he’d been in to say, “Abby, I don’t think Jethro needs that much detail.”
“I don’t, Abbs. And Tim, I am sincerely sorry I doubted your skill with breasts.”
“Uh… Thanks. Let’s not ever mention this again.”
Gibbs nodded emphatically at that, and then, already in possession of vastly more information than he ever wanted about Abby’s breasts, looked down to watch Kelly nursing away. Tim’s on Abby’s far side, half sitting on the bed, stroking Kelly’s head. Abby’s cradling her in her arms. And Kelly lay there, eyes closed, blissful expression on her face, sucking away.
“She’s a good eater.”
“Yeah. I was really afraid this was going to be hard, you read so much stuff about how hard it is, and how babies don’t know how to latch on, and how if you have a c-section they end up doped up and too drugged to eat properly, but other than the fact it feels really weird, it’s going pretty smooth.”
Gibbs strokes her cheek and arm, feeling her tiny fist under his fingers. After a second of that he remembered why he’d popped in. “Do you want everyone else to come in?”
Tim looked to Abby for the answer. “Sure, bring ‘em all in, time to celebrate, and celebrations are more fun with lots of people.”
“I’ll go get them.”
There are universal constants. Gravity. There are local constants. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And there are social constants, and how people act upon seeing the new baby is one of those things.So like in everyone else’s family, there are hugs and congratulations and “She’s so beautiful!” and requests for the full story of how Kelly got on the outside and speculation as to who she looks like.
Jimmy having a bag filled with really delicious smelling food might have been a little off the beaten path, but it reminded Tim that’s it’s getting onto dinner and he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Abby’s still not feeling very hungry, but she does take a little plain (but yummy smelling) beef broth, while Breena holds Kelly and Penny and Jimmy pet her. (Ducky hovering around, beaming, getting pictures of everything.)
Looks good on you, too.When Sarah got there Penny looked from her to Gibbs and Gibbs sort of shrugged indicating, that, okay, yeah, he can maybe, sort of see the resemblance. (But he still thinks Kelly looks like Abby must have as a baby.)
Eventually Ziva and Tony got there, and Ziva’s holding Kelly the way Abby held Molly when she was brand new, and Tony stepped back from slapping Tim on the back and watched Ziva do it, then crossed to her, wrapping his arms around her waist, head resting on her shoulder and whispered to her, “Looks good on you.”
A few minutes later Ziva handed Kelly over to Tony and whispered back, "Looks good on you, too."
And a bit after that, when Kelly was drifting off, and Abby was drooping, the rest of the family headed out to find their places in the waiting room. Like with Jimmy and Breena, the whole of the next two days will have someone here, ready to leap into action and fetch whatever they may want, or offer whatever help they may need, but they’ll retreat far enough back to give them time to rest alone as well.
Chapter 232: Family
Gibbs stands quietly in front of the door. He listens carefully and doesn’t hear anything on the other side, so he doesn’t knock. He opens it, peeks in, and then slips through, walking silently.
They’re sleeping. Which he expected. He knows he and Shannon certainly crashed pretty quickly after the excitement was over, and he figured Abby and Tim would, too.
Even without hours of labor, or a terrifying and painful emergency C-section, just the days, weeks of waiting are exhausting.
He walks over to Abby, lying in a hospital bed. Hospital gown, exhausted sleep, IV tubes, all of that looks familiar, but it’s the smell, that sweet combination of blood and amniotic fluids with an undertone of Lysol that whips him back in time by more than thirty years.
He blinks, clears his eyes, and kisses her on the forehead. She murmurs something, shifts a little, and settles back into sleep.
Tim’s crashed out on the sofa. It’s too short for him to lay across it, so he’s sprawled out, head lolling on the backrest, both hands protectively clasped around the tiny bundle snoozing on his chest.
Gibbs gently sits next to him, looking at their little girl. Or not snoozing. Two bleary blue eyes are wide open and staring around.
“Hi,” he says it very quietly, finger tracing down Kelly’s cheek, the feel of her skin under his finger also whipping him back in time, and Tim stirs, opening one eye. “Go back to sleep, Tim. I’m going to take her for a walk.”
For a second Tim’s hands close a little more tightly around his daughter, and then he seems to realize it’s Gibbs, so he mumbles something like, “Okay,” and closes his eye again.
Gibbs gently picks up Kelly, cradling her against his chest, and heads into the hallway. Once out there he says, “Let’s let your parents get some sleep. They’ll need it.” He’s bouncing her a little as they walk, humming something tuneless.
He’s amazed at how this brings him back. It’s been thirty-three years since he held his daughter for the first time, and right now he’d tell you it was yesterday.
He kisses the top of her head, memories of kissing his own Kelly like this bright in his mind. “You were named after two incredible girls, Kelly Marie, and one day, when you’re a bit bigger, I’m going to tell you all about them.”
Right now he’s the only one at the hospital. Sometimes it’s good to be the Boss. Tony, Ziva, and Draga are still on the case, though at last update Sharpe had fallen for the Prisoner’s dilemma, and Tony was just on clean up with his confession.
Meanwhile, once Ziva and Draga got back, they’d have a signed confession to show Harper, so that should break him pretty fast.
Ducky and Jimmy had agreed to both stay at Autopsy. Working together they can finish everything up faster and get here that much sooner, and more importantly, stay that much longer. He hasn’t heard anything from Breena, but assumes she and Molly will be coming soon.
And yeah, it’s not Jimmy’s meet your little brother fantasy, but meet your cousin will be awfully good, too.
He identifies the dark-haired woman walking toward him by her stride and attitude before he can make out the details of her face, after all, his glasses are in his pocket.
Penny.
She stops in front of him. “Is that her?”
Okay, it’s a kind of dumb question. Not like he’d be here, walking the hall with someone else’s kid. But it’s easy to get rattled when you’re excited, and he might have just as easily asked her the same thing if she’d gotten here first.
“Yeah. They’re getting a nap, so we’re getting a walk.” He stands at an angle so she can see her great-granddaughter’s face.
She pets Kelly, a wide, happy grin that puts him very strongly in mind of Tim on her face. “She’s the spitting image of Sarah.”
Abby looked like thisThat confuses Gibbs. He was thinking this is what Abby must have looked like as a baby. He shifts his hold, cradling her so he can look at her face, finding a place to sit down so he can really look at her. He slips the little crocheted cap off her head, finding a fine fuzz of blond hair.“Abby. Abby looked like this as a baby.”
Penelope sits next to him, leaning over, staring at her. “Maybe. I still think she looks like her aunt.” She fits the cap back on Kelly’s head. “Did you get any details?”
“Nah. They were both asleep when I came in. Got the same text you did.”
She smiles at that. “They look okay?”
“As okay as two exhausted, sleeping people can.”
That gets a laugh out of Penny.
Gibbs realizes Kelly hasn’t been properly introduced. “Kelly, this is your great-grandma.” He looks up from the baby to Tim’s grandmother. “What is she going to call you?”
“Penny. They all do.”
He nods. “Kelly, this is Penny. And when you can talk, you can call me Pop.”
“Can I hold her?” Just like Tim, he feels his hands curl around this little girl, not wanting to let her go. But he forces them to relax, he’s got to share.
“Sure.”
Penny cradles Kelly to her shoulder. “God, it comes back. I haven’t done this since James was a baby.”
“James?”
“Tim’s youngest second cousin. Three years.”
“I was thinking the same thing. But thirty-three years for me.”
Penny nods. Kelly begins to squawk, and Penny bounces her gently, patting her back, making shushing noises.
“She’s been awake a while. I’m thinking it’s naptime for her.” Gibbs holds out his hands, wanting to take her back, but Penelope doesn’t look like she wants to let go.
“You got to carry her out. I can take her back in. Show me where their room is.”
“Okay.”
Penny stands up, her chin pressed against the top of her head. She pats Kelly’s back, walking with a little bounce in her step. Gibbs watches, approving of her technique, and Kelly starts to settle down.
“It comes back easy, doesn’t it?”
Gibbs nods at that.
They sneak into Tim and Abby’s room. Penny lays her down in the clear plastic bassinette next to Abby’s bed. He kisses Abby once more, whispering, “She’s beautiful, Abbs,” and heads back into the hallway.
A second after the door shuts, Penny’s phone buzzes. She takes it, and Gibbs hears, “Hello. Yes… Just saw her… Room 207, but everyone is sleeping now, so maybe an hour or so is a good idea... Uh huh... Call when you get here.” And then hangs up the phone.
“Who was that?”
“Sarah. She just got the message. Tim isn’t answering his phone, so she called me.”
Gibbs nods. “Get some coffee?”
“That sounds good.”
They’re in the cafeteria, at a table, with no coffee. Several seconds after stepping in and smelling the coffee, both Gibbs and Penny had opted for other beverages.
Gibbs sips his. “Anyone tell his parents?”
“John calls every few weeks. I’ll tell him the next time we talk. And I don’t know if it’s habit or if things are getting better, but he sent that text to Tori, too.”
“You’re still talking to John?”
Penny shrugged. “Arguing. Yelling. Trying to pound it through that thick, stubborn head of his that what he and Tori did was not appropriate. She got it. Or is smart enough to pretend to get it. Or at least was crying when I got off the phone with her. But she’s also never been disappointed in Tim. He’s still firmly convinced he didn’t go far enough because he couldn’t turn Tim into a sailor.”
Gibbs feels himself tense at that. “And if yelling doesn’t do it?”
Penny’s holding her coffee tightly and stares up at the ceiling, then looks back to Gibbs and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’d like to think I know what I’d do. I know what I did in the past. Joining the peace movement could have killed Nelson’s career, and he wasn’t thrilled about me doing it, but when he saw what we were building... That wasn’t warfare. It wasn’t honorable, and it wasn’t about defending people. He didn’t stand in my way, but if he had, I would have gone.
“John’s my son, and if he can’t… If I need to, I’ll let him go.”
Gibbs nods at that.
Penny takes another sip of her tea. “This is almost as bad as the coffee smells.”
Gibbs sees her change the subject, and since there’s nothing else to add, he goes with it, taking a sip of his own drink. He has lemonade, which he suspects has never met a real lemon, or real sugar, and it’s entirely possible even the water is artificial. “You think they feed this to the patients?”
“I really hope not,” Penny says, getting her phone out and texting.
Gibbs raises an eyebrow at her, and then a few seconds later her phone chimes with a return text. “Doesn’t matter if this is what they feed them or not. I’ve got Ducky and Jimmy on bringing real, delicious, and nutritionally appropriate food for them.”
That got a smile out of Gibbs.
The rest of what he’s taken to thinking of as the Mallard branch of the family showed up next, without Molly.
He flashed Jimmy a curious look as Penny hugged Breena, and he said, “She’s still at daycare. She’ll want to hop all over Abby as soon as she sees her, so waiting until all the tubes are out is a good plan. Tomorrow or the next, we’ll bring her.”
Gibbs nods. Granted, he hadn’t thought about that, but it made sense.
“Are they receiving visitors?” Ducky asked.
“Everyone was asleep when we were last in there, but I’d imagine quietly poking your head in to check wouldn’t be a problem,” Penny replied.
“I’ll go.” And Gibbs was off, headed toward their room, so he missed the smiles passing between Jimmy and Breena and Penny and Ducky.
This time when he got nearer to the door he could hear quiet crying and voices, so he poked his head in and said, “Feel like some company?”
“Sure,” Tim said, mid-diaper change. Which was apparently the reason why Kelly was crying.
“Gibbs! Oh, you’re here! Have you seen her, yet? She’s beautiful!”
Gibbs paused next to Tim to tickle Kelly’s tummy, which didn’t stop the crying, but did make her look away from Tim to him, and then took two more steps to Abby, kissing her gently. “Yeah, Abbs. She is beautiful. I was in here two hours ago. You were asleep. Kelly and I went for a quick walk, met Penny while we were out there. She thinks Kelly looks like Tim’s sister.”
Tim stares at his daughter, and tries to remember back, but the image of what Sarah looked like brand new just isn’t forming in his mind. “She might. Can’t really remember, right now.” Then he finished wiping her off, and got the new diaper on and snug, followed by the onesie, which Kelly seemed to appreciate, because she stopped crying.
“All nice and warm now?” Tim asked her, picking her up and taking her over to Abby. “So who’s here?” he asked Gibbs as Abby started getting ready to nurse.
“Penny, Ducky, Breena and Jimmy, Sarah should be here any minute, and whenever they get Harper taken care of Tony and Ziva will be along,” he answers, keeping up a very tight line of direct eye contact with Tim. Since Molly, he’s been aware of the fact that one of the biggest changes since he was a dad with a baby is that these days the girls will just whip out a breast and nurse babies like it’s no big deal.
And on an intellectual level he gets it. First and foremost it’s a sign that he’s family and part of the inner circle. Because while they will nurse in public, this is a lot less stealthy than how they behave when out and about.
And he can understand that it can’t be fun to have to excuse yourself from whatever is going on to feed the baby. And beyond all that, if anyone is going to leave because of nursing, he’s the one with the two working feet who didn’t just get cut open five hours ago, so he’d be the one to leave the room.
So, yes, he understands this and how it works.
And he doesn’t want to leave, but… okay, it’s still a little squirmy. So like with when Molly was getting a snack, he is keeping up a very strict not looking policy.
He’s staring at Tim, filling him in with how the prisoner’s dilemma worked, when Abby said to him, giggling, because apparently everything is awfully funny to her right now, “It’s okay Gibbs, you can look. You don’t have to pretend I’m not nursing. This is what they’re for.”
And, okay, looking back his reaction probably wasn’t the most mature thing he’d ever done. Or the kindest. And he was aware of the fact that Abby had to be on some sort of painkiller, but it hadn’t really hit him that she didn’t have any filters between her brain and her mouth.
But he is kind of uncomfortable, and he’s awfully good at spreading uncomfortable around. And, honestly, kind of giddy on grandbaby joy. So, still keeping up eye contact with Tim, he very gently smacked him upside the head and said, “If she thinks that’swhat those are for, you aren’t doing your job.”
“Gibbs!” Abby sounded utterly horrified. “Oh no you don’t! You apologize to McGee right this second! If there was ever a man who knew his way around a breast it’s McGee. He’s practically a lesbian he’s so good with them. Some guys just don’t get it, they pinch and twist, like the dials on those old radios, you remember them, right? Of course you do, you’re old enough to remember those radios, but not McGee, not that you don’t remember those radios, do you? Off topic. He gets that different parts of the breast respond to touch differently, and he knows how to use the texture of my clothing to play with me, and you know nipples respond to touch differently than the flesh around them, and he figured out how to do this thing with his teeth, and how the flat part of the tooth feels different than the sharp part, and since I’ve been pregnant my nipples have been really sensitive-- Do you have sensitive nipples, Gibbs? Anyway, he figured out that he could do this thing with his eyelashes, oh my god, if you’ve got sensitive nipples, you’ve got to get someone to try it on you, feels—“
Which was when Tim finally jerked out of the frozen, watching-the-train-wreck-happening-but-unable-to-do-anything-about-it,-blushing-so-hard-his-hair-was-going-to-turn-red space he’d been in to say, “Abby, I don’t think Jethro needs that much detail.”
“I don’t, Abbs. And Tim, I am sincerely sorry I doubted your skill with breasts.”
“Uh… Thanks. Let’s not ever mention this again.”
Gibbs nodded emphatically at that, and then, already in possession of vastly more information than he ever wanted about Abby’s breasts, looked down to watch Kelly nursing away. Tim’s on Abby’s far side, half sitting on the bed, stroking Kelly’s head. Abby’s cradling her in her arms. And Kelly lay there, eyes closed, blissful expression on her face, sucking away.
“She’s a good eater.”
“Yeah. I was really afraid this was going to be hard, you read so much stuff about how hard it is, and how babies don’t know how to latch on, and how if you have a c-section they end up doped up and too drugged to eat properly, but other than the fact it feels really weird, it’s going pretty smooth.”
Gibbs strokes her cheek and arm, feeling her tiny fist under his fingers. After a second of that he remembered why he’d popped in. “Do you want everyone else to come in?”
Tim looked to Abby for the answer. “Sure, bring ‘em all in, time to celebrate, and celebrations are more fun with lots of people.”
“I’ll go get them.”
There are universal constants. Gravity. There are local constants. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. And there are social constants, and how people act upon seeing the new baby is one of those things.So like in everyone else’s family, there are hugs and congratulations and “She’s so beautiful!” and requests for the full story of how Kelly got on the outside and speculation as to who she looks like.
Jimmy having a bag filled with really delicious smelling food might have been a little off the beaten path, but it reminded Tim that’s it’s getting onto dinner and he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Abby’s still not feeling very hungry, but she does take a little plain (but yummy smelling) beef broth, while Breena holds Kelly and Penny and Jimmy pet her. (Ducky hovering around, beaming, getting pictures of everything.)
Looks good on you, too.When Sarah got there Penny looked from her to Gibbs and Gibbs sort of shrugged indicating, that, okay, yeah, he can maybe, sort of see the resemblance. (But he still thinks Kelly looks like Abby must have as a baby.)Eventually Ziva and Tony got there, and Ziva’s holding Kelly the way Abby held Molly when she was brand new, and Tony stepped back from slapping Tim on the back and watched Ziva do it, then crossed to her, wrapping his arms around her waist, head resting on her shoulder and whispered to her, “Looks good on you.”
A few minutes later Ziva handed Kelly over to Tony and whispered back, "Looks good on you, too."
And a bit after that, when Kelly was drifting off, and Abby was drooping, the rest of the family headed out to find their places in the waiting room. Like with Jimmy and Breena, the whole of the next two days will have someone here, ready to leap into action and fetch whatever they may want, or offer whatever help they may need, but they’ll retreat far enough back to give them time to rest alone as well.
October 10, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 231
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 231: Kelly Marie MceGee
“You want me to stay home?” Tim asks.
Abby shrugs. It’s June 16th, she’s been having annoying contractions all night, one here, another there, three in four minutes, two hours of nothing, six more in an hour, nothing for two more hours, one every twenty minutes, nothing.
Pretty much the only thing that’s happening is she’s not sleeping and she’s irritable and annoyed.
They’re not even hard enough to hurt, not really. Just enough to jolt up the adrenaline, with “Now? Are we ready, now? Is it hospital time, now?” But they always keep petering out before three hours of somewhat steadyish contractions.
“Go. Catch bad guys. No reason for both of us to be sitting here going stir crazy.”
“Okay. You get to two hours of them, let me know.”
“Trust me, if it looks like we’re getting close to go time, I’ll text.”
“Good.” He kissed her, petted Kelly, and headed toward the Navy Yard.
They’re on day two of an active case. Which is kind of interesting because Gibbs won’t let him leave the Navy Yard. To some degree it makes sense, the crime scene is in Appomattox, which isn’t exactly a ten minute drive away. But he’s never been quiet so firmly tied to one place.
So, Ziva and Draga are off in western VA, picking up “Alvin Burns” aka Patrick Harper, their current number one suspect for the guy who pulled the trigger. He’s searching through Harper’s financials, finds something hinky, and then gets to sit there and wait until Gibbs and Tony go fetch Dick Sharpe, who may indeed be the lynchpin of this whole thing.
Since he’s the one who found the money trail, he’s the one who’s getting to run interrogation on this one.
Sharpe doesn’t exactly have the hardened criminal look. But Tim doesn’t exactly look like a veteran cop, either.
Pretty much they’re two tech guys, in a small room, with a table between them. Tim’s got what looked like a murder but was rapidly turning into a drug running deal gone bad. Sharpe wants to make sure Tim never gets the confirmation on that.
Time to play.Time to play.
They spend a good hour of just messing around. Getting their feet wet. Sizing each other up. He’d gotten confirmation that Sharpe does get paid for something, but he’s sticking to the story that he’s an herbologist producing homeopathic remedies.
Tim’s cell chimes.
He pulls the phone out of his jacket, looks at it, hopes that his eyes lighting up looks like excitement about the case, and tucks it back in. Then he stands up, leans forward on both of his hands, towering over Sharpe, stares him right in the eyes, waits a second until he sees the fear, and says, “You are so fucked! Harper broke,” and slowly walks out.
Behind the mirror, Tony fell off the stool he was leaning against.
Tim runs in a second later. “Two straight hours of contractions. Let him sit for an hour, and then hit him with a prisoner’s dilemma. I’m out of here.” And runs back out.
Tony looks at Gibbs, eyes still wide. “Have you ever heard him say that word?”
Gibbs nods, bright, wide smile lighting his face. “Couple times. Never in here, though.”
“I wasn’t even sure he knew what it meant.”
That got a laugh out of Gibbs.
Half an hour later, he’s back at his house, and Abby’s contractions were still limping along at one every nine minutes. The bag is packed. The crib’s set up. Car seat is installed. All that’s left now is actually driving there.
She’s talking to Dr. Draz on the phone as they head toward the hospital. Almost baby time!
For Tim, there’s a very surreal sort of calm to parking and walking in. It’s an intense awareness of this being the last thing they will ever do as people without children.
Standing in front of an elevator, fairly heavy bag on his shoulder, left arm wrapped around her waist, her head on his shoulder, waiting, all of it wrapped in crystalline stillness.
They’d filled out all of the paperwork, all of the consent forms, everything, weeks before. If Abby had needed to get in and get treated fast, neither of them were willing to wait to have all the forms filled out.
So it’s done.
He’s leaning against the treatment table, watching her take her street clothing off. Each thing she takes off he carefully folds and places in the bag.
Then she puts on the gown (opens in the front) and they wait again.
“Okay, Abby, you’re at three centimeters dilated, zero station, and Kelly is ready to go. You’re going to get rolled over to the OR, and Dr. Flanen, the anesthesiologist, is going to get you set up with an epidural. Tim’s going to stay here with me, get changed into scrubs, and in about fifteen minutes we’ll all be in the OR getting Kelly out. About ten minutes after that, you’ll be saying hello to your baby,” Dr. Draz said.
One of the nurses handed Tim a neatly folded pile of scrubs, and he was about to leap off and set the world record for stripping off and getting into surgical scrubs when Abby stopped him, holding his hand.
“Not allowed to wear any jewelry in there, right?”
Dr. Draz nodded.
She took off her wedding and engagement rings and handed them to him. “Keep ‘em warm for me?”
“Yeah.” He slipped them onto his right pinky. They’re a little snug, but not so bad he’ll have a hard time getting them off. He kissed her. “Have ‘em back on you in an hour.”
She sighed. “I hope so.”
He kissed her again. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I know.”
“It really will.”
“Sure.” She didn’t sound sure about that. The nurses were waiting to roll her toward the OR, so she reached up, gave him one last kiss, he squeezed her hand, and petted Kelly gently.
“See you in a few minutes.”
She nodded, tears in her eyes, and it was killing him that she was that scared and there was nothing he could do about it.
But they took her off, and he may not be able to make her less scared, but he can get changed very, very fast, so he did. It probably didn’t help anything, but he was standing there, outside the OR, a few seconds faster than he would have been otherwise.
A few minutes of standing there later, a cheerful looking woman in pink scrubs with little purple hearts all over them heads out and says, “Mr. McGee?”
He nods. Not like there are any other soon-to-be-dads out here. Of course, one guy in blue scrubs looks a whole lot like every other guy in blue scrubs, so maybe it’s not an entirely stupid question.
“Hi, I’m Beverly Carter. I’m the pediatric nurse here.” She holds out a small strip of plastic then takes his right hand in hers and begins to fasten the id bracelet above his watch. “You, Abby, and Kelly are all going to get one of these. Kelly’s has a little tracker in it. It’ll make sure she can’t leave the maternity ward with anyone other than you or Abby.”
He looks at it, and it’s got Abby’s info on it.
“Everything look right?”
“It’s Abby’s information.”
“Yep. We do everything here based on Team Mom. Yours has a 2 on it, right?”
He looks again. McGee, Abby, 2. “Yep.”
“Okay, good. Abby’s almost all prepped. One of the nurses will head out in a minute or two and fetch you.”
“All right.”
“Hold tight. It’ll be show time soon.”
And after two of the longest minutes ever, another nurse did come out, this one in blue scrubs, like his, and ushered him in.
He knew he was scared. He knew he was nervous. He didn’t realize how bad it was until the wash of relief hit when he saw Abby was smiling, and talking, and joking, and actually, she was in a damn good mood.
“McGee! You’re here.” She’s smiling brightly at him, just absolutely grinning from ear to ear.
He wonders at that for a second, she hasn't called him McGee in... months now, even at work, but, she called him McGee for ten years, and she’s probably pretty high right now, so if that’s what comes out, it’s what comes out. Not like it isn’t his name.
“Yeah, baby.” He’s standing next to her, petting her face. She’s strapped down on the surgical table, arms extended, tubes all over the place, and if it wasn’t for her smile, that would be making him panic, but she’s in such a good mood she’s giggling, and it’s catching, making him smile.
Another nurse offers him a rolling stool, so he can sit down next to her, so he does. Face close to hers, lips against her temple, hand twined with hers.
“They gave me morphine,” she sings.
“I take it you’re liking it?”
“Oh yeah. This is fabulous. I can’t move anything below my chest, and that was trippy, because I could feel it happen. Like first, I couldn’t move my toes. I kept telling them, move toes, move, but they wouldn’t. And then it was my knees, and then thighs and stomach and that was just really weird, but then everything stopped hurting, and oh my God! This is just sooooooooooo good! I forgot how good not hurting was, this is just perfect, and I love it, and I’m going to figure out how to go back in time and slap myself upside the back of my own head because this is so good and I can’t believe I was freaked out about it, I mean how could something that feels this good be freaky? Breena tried to tell me about it, but I was too scared to listen and God scared was dumb—“
“Inhale, baby.”
“Oh right, yeah, probably a good idea. Look!”
He has no idea what she wants him to look at, but the only direction she can see is up, so he looked up. There was a poster of butterflies above them.
So cute!“It’s sooooooo cute!”
“Yep.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
He didn’t think it was possible, but the grin on her face got even wider. “Jimmy can write us prescriptions for more morphine.”
Tim’s getting a little nervous about that. What with the fifteen or so other people in the room. “Umm… Yeah.”
“He really should, because this is so great, McGee, you’ve got to try it!”
“Okay, Abby. Just, not right now.”
“Oh. Good point. When we retire. We’ll do Burning Man and try everything and it’ll be so much fun.”
“All right.”
“We’re ready to start,” Dr. Draz says.
Tim nods, not sure what he’d say to that, but Abby’s happily babbling away about getting this show on the road and how that phrase came to be in the first place and it’s it kind of weird that people say things like that even though there is no show, and he just sits there, lips pressed to her temple, fingers twined with hers, letting the words wash over him, keeping an ear on the quiet things the docs are saying to each other as well.
“McGee,”
“Yeah, baby.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.” He kisses her. “Love you so much.”
She giggles at that. And months of tension break. He feels it crack. Six weeks of fear and worry and this is it, they’re here, in the hospital, and sure, things could go wrong, but he can feel in his gut that it won’t, the worst is over, the worry is done, and from here on out this is going to go right.
He starts to giggle with her, squeezing her hand, hard.
“You’re laughing,” Abby says.
“Yeah. You were, too.”
“I was?” She looks really confused by that.
That makes him laugh a little harder.
“Yeah, you were.”
“Huh?” she laughs a little more, and he kisses her lips.
“You’re going to feel some pressure now, and we’ll have her out in about a minute,” Dr. Draz says.
“Okay.” Abby’s smiling, then looks startled. “Oh, that’s trippy. I can kind of sense I’m moving, but I can’t feel it. Sort of like my brain knows but my body doesn’t. Oh my God! This is so cool!”
Tim laughs at that, too. Which set Abby off. When she took a breath she said, “The first thing Kelly’s going to hear is us laughing.”
He feels the tears in his eyes, and makes himself laugh a few seconds longer, and then stopped dead when he heard a small, squeaky cry.
Abby inhales fast and hard, holding his hand, fingers curled tight into his. He looks up from her face, wondering when they’ll get to see her.
“Time of birth?” Nurse Carter asks.
“Not quite yet, she isn’t all out. Your little girl’s pretty eager to meet you. One more second... Got her. Time of birth, 14:14.” Then Dr. Draz was holding Kelly where they could see her, over the drape and saying, “Hi Mom! Hi Dad!” She’s kind of grayish and squawking, unhappy about this, and before he can do more than register one very fast image, of a tiny face screwed up and crying, Nurse Carter came around, took Tim by the hand, and gathered Kelly up in a soft blanket, taking both of them to the warmer.
Not too pleased to be out.Carter’s rubbing the grayish goo and blood off a Kelly, and she’s yelling, staring at both of them, looking really confused, and Tim stood there, staring, astounded that she’s really here, tiny, and bright pink, and loud, and wet, and… just… here.
His hand was hovering over her arm. “It’s okay, you can touch her.” He traced his finger down her arm, feeling how soft and warm and a little damp she was, and that seemed to get her attention. His eyes focused on hers, and hers pointed in his general direction as five tiny fingers closed around his and she stopped yelling.
“Hi.”
Her head tilts a little, like she’s taking him, or maybe everything, in.
He wipes his eyes with his free hand, aware he’s crying because he’s having a hard time focusing on her. Then Carter says, “Do you want to cut the cord?”
This strikes his as a weird question because it looks pretty cut to him. There’s like, four inches of it still attached to Kelly, though there’s a clamp right where her belly button will be, and another one at the top of the cord.
First touchTim shakes his head. His voice isn’t going to hold for saying anything right now, and her hand is curled around his left index finger, so he’d have to let go to cut it.
She’s all dried off, cord trimmed flush with the clamp, and has a little tag on her ankle.
“Okay. We’ve got to weigh her. Did you want to get any pictures?”
That got Tim’s attention, broke through the feel of her fingers on his, of this first moment of touching his daughter. He gingerly started to pull his hand away, but she wasn’t letting go, so he took her wrist in his right hand, staggered that it’s the same width as his thumb, and holds her hand in place while he pulls back.
He reached back to pat his pocket for his phone, and realized he wasn’t wearing his jeans, so he didn’t have it with him.
So he watches as they weigh her, carefully put a diaper and onesie on, a tiny little cap, and wrapped her into a tidy bundle. Maybe it took two minutes, maybe three, but very soon he was standing there with a person so tiny her whole body could rest against half of his chest.
He stands there, holding her, not sure what to do next. Carter takes him in hand and leads him back to Abby, skirting the doctors who are stitching everything up and finishing off the surgery.
He sits back down on the stool next to Abby’s head. Her eyes are closed and she’s humming gently. Red Hot Chili Peppers if he’s right, and absurdly he’s wondering when she would have heard them last, not like they’re on either of their playlists.
He kisses her again, tries to think through the easiest way to do this, because he’s really, awfully, heart-clenchingly nervous about possibly dropping Kelly, but then he remembers that Abby can turn her head to the right, and… yeah, that’ll work.
Abby, open your eyes!“Abby, open your eyes and turn toward me.”
She did, looking pretty glazed, but she saw Kelly and lit up fireworks going off on a starless night.
“Oh!”
He scoots close enough so she can kiss and nuzzle Kelly. She does for a moment, and Kelly squeaks at it, then starts sucking on Abby’s nose. That made her laugh. Made Tim laugh, too. He gently pulled Kelly back, cuddling her against his chest, and offered one of his fingers for her to suck on, which she did, vigorously. And then leaned and slouched enough so she was still face to face with Abby.
Carter saw that and said, “Might have a hungry girl there. Once you’re all stitched up and back in your room, I think she’ll want to nurse.”
Tim’s really, really tempted to say, “Ya think?” But he doesn’t. Carter doesn’t need him channeling Gibbs.
Abby’s got her lips pressed to Kelly’s forehead, whispering, “Can’t wait to hold you.”
Eventually, and Tim’s sort of fuzzy on how this happened, and Abby’s really fuzzy on it (if you ask her one minute they were in the OR and the next they were back in their room, and while she’s got a good excuse for that, he doesn’t, but he still doesn’t have much detail beyond that) they were back in their room, having ascertained that Kelly was six pounds two ounces, eighteen and a half inches long, in possession of ten fingers and ten toes, murky blue eyes, and that, once it was dry, her hair (not that there was a whole lot of it) would probably be sort of dark blondish.
It took a bit of manhandling, but the nurses got Abby onto the bed in their room, little bassinette/warmer thing for Kelly to sleep in next to her, explaining to Tim that they’re supposed to keep track of every time Kelly nurses and each diaper they change and that’s what the paperwork under the bassinette is for.
But finally, Abby was settled, sitting up, and he wants to be able to snuggle up and sit behind her for this, let his body support hers, but between the IV tubes, the catheter, the fact that she still can’t feel anything below her chest, that’s not going to happen. So he hands her Kelly, and kind of half-leans, half-perches one hip on the side of the bed, (It’s not wide enough for him to lay next to her if she’s in the middle, and she’s in the middle.) stroking Kelly’s cheek while Abby holds her for the first time.
Her lips are pressed to the top of Kelly’s head, and she’s inhaling deeply, babbling about how tiny she is, and how warm, and she just smells amazing, and so, so tiny, she certainly didn’t feel that tiny when she was on the inside, and Tim kisses Abby’s forehead, basking in this.
Eventually he pulls back enough to realize that maybe some pictures would be a good idea. So he hunts down his jeans, finds his phone, and begins to take pictures of Abby and Kelly snuggled together.
Kelly starts crying again, which makes both of them a little nervous because now that she’s here they’ve got to figure out what to do, but after about two cries and some fairly determined wiggling from Kelly, the idea that she may want to eat comes through loud and clear.
First mealTim takes Kelly from Abby while she gets herself clear of the gown she’s in. Which Kelly did not appreciate. Moving further from the food was not something she wanted to do, so the crying got louder, but a few seconds later Abby had her breast out, and the pillows Tim had given her arranged into something that would hopefully be useful for nursing, and after that Kelly was in her arms, found the nipple with no problem and very enthusiastically nursing.
“How’s it feel?” Tim asks Abby, watching Kelly gulping away.
“Really weird.” She thinks about that. “Ohhh… not sure I like that.”
“What?”
“You know how your foot feels when you sit on it too long and then get up?”
“Yeah.”
“It feels like that.”
Tim winces. “Ow.”
“Not really ow, but, hot and tingly and just weird.”
He snaps a few more pictures. Then notices there are thirty-five messages on his phone, (Five from Gibbs. For a moment he wonders if there’s a Marine Grandpa getting ready to storm the hospital.) so he hunts through the pics he’s just taken, found one he liked (not a nursing one), and sent that to his entire family list with: Kelly Marie McGee 2:14 6/16/15 6lb 2oz. Abby and Kelly are doing fine. Kelly’s having her first meal.
When he looked up from his phone, Abby was gazing down at Kelly, eyes filled with happy tears, gently stroking her very tiny ear, as she suckled away.
Screw it! If half of him ends up hanging off the side of the bed, so be it. He gently got himself onto the bed with them, half-sitting/lying on his side (and yes, his back half was dangling off) but he could rest his lips on Abby’s shoulder, offer his arm as additional support for Kelly, and just hold both of them close.
And eventually there would be the whole: when do we switch sides thing, and does she need to be burped in between, and wake up Kelly, please wake up and finish nursing, you’ve only done one breast, but right now there’s just this golden moment, wrapped around his girls, with no fear and no pain, just awash in perfect, content love.
Next
Chapter 231: Kelly Marie MceGee
“You want me to stay home?” Tim asks.
Abby shrugs. It’s June 16th, she’s been having annoying contractions all night, one here, another there, three in four minutes, two hours of nothing, six more in an hour, nothing for two more hours, one every twenty minutes, nothing.
Pretty much the only thing that’s happening is she’s not sleeping and she’s irritable and annoyed.
They’re not even hard enough to hurt, not really. Just enough to jolt up the adrenaline, with “Now? Are we ready, now? Is it hospital time, now?” But they always keep petering out before three hours of somewhat steadyish contractions.
“Go. Catch bad guys. No reason for both of us to be sitting here going stir crazy.”
“Okay. You get to two hours of them, let me know.”
“Trust me, if it looks like we’re getting close to go time, I’ll text.”
“Good.” He kissed her, petted Kelly, and headed toward the Navy Yard.
They’re on day two of an active case. Which is kind of interesting because Gibbs won’t let him leave the Navy Yard. To some degree it makes sense, the crime scene is in Appomattox, which isn’t exactly a ten minute drive away. But he’s never been quiet so firmly tied to one place.
So, Ziva and Draga are off in western VA, picking up “Alvin Burns” aka Patrick Harper, their current number one suspect for the guy who pulled the trigger. He’s searching through Harper’s financials, finds something hinky, and then gets to sit there and wait until Gibbs and Tony go fetch Dick Sharpe, who may indeed be the lynchpin of this whole thing.
Since he’s the one who found the money trail, he’s the one who’s getting to run interrogation on this one.
Sharpe doesn’t exactly have the hardened criminal look. But Tim doesn’t exactly look like a veteran cop, either.
Pretty much they’re two tech guys, in a small room, with a table between them. Tim’s got what looked like a murder but was rapidly turning into a drug running deal gone bad. Sharpe wants to make sure Tim never gets the confirmation on that.
Time to play.Time to play.They spend a good hour of just messing around. Getting their feet wet. Sizing each other up. He’d gotten confirmation that Sharpe does get paid for something, but he’s sticking to the story that he’s an herbologist producing homeopathic remedies.
Tim’s cell chimes.
He pulls the phone out of his jacket, looks at it, hopes that his eyes lighting up looks like excitement about the case, and tucks it back in. Then he stands up, leans forward on both of his hands, towering over Sharpe, stares him right in the eyes, waits a second until he sees the fear, and says, “You are so fucked! Harper broke,” and slowly walks out.
Behind the mirror, Tony fell off the stool he was leaning against.
Tim runs in a second later. “Two straight hours of contractions. Let him sit for an hour, and then hit him with a prisoner’s dilemma. I’m out of here.” And runs back out.
Tony looks at Gibbs, eyes still wide. “Have you ever heard him say that word?”
Gibbs nods, bright, wide smile lighting his face. “Couple times. Never in here, though.”
“I wasn’t even sure he knew what it meant.”
That got a laugh out of Gibbs.
Half an hour later, he’s back at his house, and Abby’s contractions were still limping along at one every nine minutes. The bag is packed. The crib’s set up. Car seat is installed. All that’s left now is actually driving there.
She’s talking to Dr. Draz on the phone as they head toward the hospital. Almost baby time!
For Tim, there’s a very surreal sort of calm to parking and walking in. It’s an intense awareness of this being the last thing they will ever do as people without children.
Standing in front of an elevator, fairly heavy bag on his shoulder, left arm wrapped around her waist, her head on his shoulder, waiting, all of it wrapped in crystalline stillness.
They’d filled out all of the paperwork, all of the consent forms, everything, weeks before. If Abby had needed to get in and get treated fast, neither of them were willing to wait to have all the forms filled out.
So it’s done.
He’s leaning against the treatment table, watching her take her street clothing off. Each thing she takes off he carefully folds and places in the bag.
Then she puts on the gown (opens in the front) and they wait again.
“Okay, Abby, you’re at three centimeters dilated, zero station, and Kelly is ready to go. You’re going to get rolled over to the OR, and Dr. Flanen, the anesthesiologist, is going to get you set up with an epidural. Tim’s going to stay here with me, get changed into scrubs, and in about fifteen minutes we’ll all be in the OR getting Kelly out. About ten minutes after that, you’ll be saying hello to your baby,” Dr. Draz said.
One of the nurses handed Tim a neatly folded pile of scrubs, and he was about to leap off and set the world record for stripping off and getting into surgical scrubs when Abby stopped him, holding his hand.
“Not allowed to wear any jewelry in there, right?”
Dr. Draz nodded.
She took off her wedding and engagement rings and handed them to him. “Keep ‘em warm for me?”
“Yeah.” He slipped them onto his right pinky. They’re a little snug, but not so bad he’ll have a hard time getting them off. He kissed her. “Have ‘em back on you in an hour.”
She sighed. “I hope so.”
He kissed her again. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I know.”
“It really will.”
“Sure.” She didn’t sound sure about that. The nurses were waiting to roll her toward the OR, so she reached up, gave him one last kiss, he squeezed her hand, and petted Kelly gently.
“See you in a few minutes.”
She nodded, tears in her eyes, and it was killing him that she was that scared and there was nothing he could do about it.
But they took her off, and he may not be able to make her less scared, but he can get changed very, very fast, so he did. It probably didn’t help anything, but he was standing there, outside the OR, a few seconds faster than he would have been otherwise.
A few minutes of standing there later, a cheerful looking woman in pink scrubs with little purple hearts all over them heads out and says, “Mr. McGee?”
He nods. Not like there are any other soon-to-be-dads out here. Of course, one guy in blue scrubs looks a whole lot like every other guy in blue scrubs, so maybe it’s not an entirely stupid question.
“Hi, I’m Beverly Carter. I’m the pediatric nurse here.” She holds out a small strip of plastic then takes his right hand in hers and begins to fasten the id bracelet above his watch. “You, Abby, and Kelly are all going to get one of these. Kelly’s has a little tracker in it. It’ll make sure she can’t leave the maternity ward with anyone other than you or Abby.”
He looks at it, and it’s got Abby’s info on it.
“Everything look right?”
“It’s Abby’s information.”
“Yep. We do everything here based on Team Mom. Yours has a 2 on it, right?”
He looks again. McGee, Abby, 2. “Yep.”
“Okay, good. Abby’s almost all prepped. One of the nurses will head out in a minute or two and fetch you.”
“All right.”
“Hold tight. It’ll be show time soon.”
And after two of the longest minutes ever, another nurse did come out, this one in blue scrubs, like his, and ushered him in.
He knew he was scared. He knew he was nervous. He didn’t realize how bad it was until the wash of relief hit when he saw Abby was smiling, and talking, and joking, and actually, she was in a damn good mood.
“McGee! You’re here.” She’s smiling brightly at him, just absolutely grinning from ear to ear.
He wonders at that for a second, she hasn't called him McGee in... months now, even at work, but, she called him McGee for ten years, and she’s probably pretty high right now, so if that’s what comes out, it’s what comes out. Not like it isn’t his name.
“Yeah, baby.” He’s standing next to her, petting her face. She’s strapped down on the surgical table, arms extended, tubes all over the place, and if it wasn’t for her smile, that would be making him panic, but she’s in such a good mood she’s giggling, and it’s catching, making him smile.
Another nurse offers him a rolling stool, so he can sit down next to her, so he does. Face close to hers, lips against her temple, hand twined with hers.
“They gave me morphine,” she sings.
“I take it you’re liking it?”
“Oh yeah. This is fabulous. I can’t move anything below my chest, and that was trippy, because I could feel it happen. Like first, I couldn’t move my toes. I kept telling them, move toes, move, but they wouldn’t. And then it was my knees, and then thighs and stomach and that was just really weird, but then everything stopped hurting, and oh my God! This is just sooooooooooo good! I forgot how good not hurting was, this is just perfect, and I love it, and I’m going to figure out how to go back in time and slap myself upside the back of my own head because this is so good and I can’t believe I was freaked out about it, I mean how could something that feels this good be freaky? Breena tried to tell me about it, but I was too scared to listen and God scared was dumb—“
“Inhale, baby.”
“Oh right, yeah, probably a good idea. Look!”
He has no idea what she wants him to look at, but the only direction she can see is up, so he looked up. There was a poster of butterflies above them.
So cute!“It’s sooooooo cute!”“Yep.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
He didn’t think it was possible, but the grin on her face got even wider. “Jimmy can write us prescriptions for more morphine.”
Tim’s getting a little nervous about that. What with the fifteen or so other people in the room. “Umm… Yeah.”
“He really should, because this is so great, McGee, you’ve got to try it!”
“Okay, Abby. Just, not right now.”
“Oh. Good point. When we retire. We’ll do Burning Man and try everything and it’ll be so much fun.”
“All right.”
“We’re ready to start,” Dr. Draz says.
Tim nods, not sure what he’d say to that, but Abby’s happily babbling away about getting this show on the road and how that phrase came to be in the first place and it’s it kind of weird that people say things like that even though there is no show, and he just sits there, lips pressed to her temple, fingers twined with hers, letting the words wash over him, keeping an ear on the quiet things the docs are saying to each other as well.
“McGee,”
“Yeah, baby.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.” He kisses her. “Love you so much.”
She giggles at that. And months of tension break. He feels it crack. Six weeks of fear and worry and this is it, they’re here, in the hospital, and sure, things could go wrong, but he can feel in his gut that it won’t, the worst is over, the worry is done, and from here on out this is going to go right.
He starts to giggle with her, squeezing her hand, hard.
“You’re laughing,” Abby says.
“Yeah. You were, too.”
“I was?” She looks really confused by that.
That makes him laugh a little harder.
“Yeah, you were.”
“Huh?” she laughs a little more, and he kisses her lips.
“You’re going to feel some pressure now, and we’ll have her out in about a minute,” Dr. Draz says.
“Okay.” Abby’s smiling, then looks startled. “Oh, that’s trippy. I can kind of sense I’m moving, but I can’t feel it. Sort of like my brain knows but my body doesn’t. Oh my God! This is so cool!”
Tim laughs at that, too. Which set Abby off. When she took a breath she said, “The first thing Kelly’s going to hear is us laughing.”
He feels the tears in his eyes, and makes himself laugh a few seconds longer, and then stopped dead when he heard a small, squeaky cry.
Abby inhales fast and hard, holding his hand, fingers curled tight into his. He looks up from her face, wondering when they’ll get to see her.
“Time of birth?” Nurse Carter asks.
“Not quite yet, she isn’t all out. Your little girl’s pretty eager to meet you. One more second... Got her. Time of birth, 14:14.” Then Dr. Draz was holding Kelly where they could see her, over the drape and saying, “Hi Mom! Hi Dad!” She’s kind of grayish and squawking, unhappy about this, and before he can do more than register one very fast image, of a tiny face screwed up and crying, Nurse Carter came around, took Tim by the hand, and gathered Kelly up in a soft blanket, taking both of them to the warmer.
Not too pleased to be out.Carter’s rubbing the grayish goo and blood off a Kelly, and she’s yelling, staring at both of them, looking really confused, and Tim stood there, staring, astounded that she’s really here, tiny, and bright pink, and loud, and wet, and… just… here.His hand was hovering over her arm. “It’s okay, you can touch her.” He traced his finger down her arm, feeling how soft and warm and a little damp she was, and that seemed to get her attention. His eyes focused on hers, and hers pointed in his general direction as five tiny fingers closed around his and she stopped yelling.
“Hi.”
Her head tilts a little, like she’s taking him, or maybe everything, in.
He wipes his eyes with his free hand, aware he’s crying because he’s having a hard time focusing on her. Then Carter says, “Do you want to cut the cord?”
This strikes his as a weird question because it looks pretty cut to him. There’s like, four inches of it still attached to Kelly, though there’s a clamp right where her belly button will be, and another one at the top of the cord.
First touchTim shakes his head. His voice isn’t going to hold for saying anything right now, and her hand is curled around his left index finger, so he’d have to let go to cut it.She’s all dried off, cord trimmed flush with the clamp, and has a little tag on her ankle.
“Okay. We’ve got to weigh her. Did you want to get any pictures?”
That got Tim’s attention, broke through the feel of her fingers on his, of this first moment of touching his daughter. He gingerly started to pull his hand away, but she wasn’t letting go, so he took her wrist in his right hand, staggered that it’s the same width as his thumb, and holds her hand in place while he pulls back.
He reached back to pat his pocket for his phone, and realized he wasn’t wearing his jeans, so he didn’t have it with him.
So he watches as they weigh her, carefully put a diaper and onesie on, a tiny little cap, and wrapped her into a tidy bundle. Maybe it took two minutes, maybe three, but very soon he was standing there with a person so tiny her whole body could rest against half of his chest.
He stands there, holding her, not sure what to do next. Carter takes him in hand and leads him back to Abby, skirting the doctors who are stitching everything up and finishing off the surgery.
He sits back down on the stool next to Abby’s head. Her eyes are closed and she’s humming gently. Red Hot Chili Peppers if he’s right, and absurdly he’s wondering when she would have heard them last, not like they’re on either of their playlists.
He kisses her again, tries to think through the easiest way to do this, because he’s really, awfully, heart-clenchingly nervous about possibly dropping Kelly, but then he remembers that Abby can turn her head to the right, and… yeah, that’ll work.
Abby, open your eyes!“Abby, open your eyes and turn toward me.”She did, looking pretty glazed, but she saw Kelly and lit up fireworks going off on a starless night.
“Oh!”
He scoots close enough so she can kiss and nuzzle Kelly. She does for a moment, and Kelly squeaks at it, then starts sucking on Abby’s nose. That made her laugh. Made Tim laugh, too. He gently pulled Kelly back, cuddling her against his chest, and offered one of his fingers for her to suck on, which she did, vigorously. And then leaned and slouched enough so she was still face to face with Abby.
Carter saw that and said, “Might have a hungry girl there. Once you’re all stitched up and back in your room, I think she’ll want to nurse.”
Tim’s really, really tempted to say, “Ya think?” But he doesn’t. Carter doesn’t need him channeling Gibbs.
Abby’s got her lips pressed to Kelly’s forehead, whispering, “Can’t wait to hold you.”
Eventually, and Tim’s sort of fuzzy on how this happened, and Abby’s really fuzzy on it (if you ask her one minute they were in the OR and the next they were back in their room, and while she’s got a good excuse for that, he doesn’t, but he still doesn’t have much detail beyond that) they were back in their room, having ascertained that Kelly was six pounds two ounces, eighteen and a half inches long, in possession of ten fingers and ten toes, murky blue eyes, and that, once it was dry, her hair (not that there was a whole lot of it) would probably be sort of dark blondish.
It took a bit of manhandling, but the nurses got Abby onto the bed in their room, little bassinette/warmer thing for Kelly to sleep in next to her, explaining to Tim that they’re supposed to keep track of every time Kelly nurses and each diaper they change and that’s what the paperwork under the bassinette is for.
But finally, Abby was settled, sitting up, and he wants to be able to snuggle up and sit behind her for this, let his body support hers, but between the IV tubes, the catheter, the fact that she still can’t feel anything below her chest, that’s not going to happen. So he hands her Kelly, and kind of half-leans, half-perches one hip on the side of the bed, (It’s not wide enough for him to lay next to her if she’s in the middle, and she’s in the middle.) stroking Kelly’s cheek while Abby holds her for the first time.
Her lips are pressed to the top of Kelly’s head, and she’s inhaling deeply, babbling about how tiny she is, and how warm, and she just smells amazing, and so, so tiny, she certainly didn’t feel that tiny when she was on the inside, and Tim kisses Abby’s forehead, basking in this.
Eventually he pulls back enough to realize that maybe some pictures would be a good idea. So he hunts down his jeans, finds his phone, and begins to take pictures of Abby and Kelly snuggled together.
Kelly starts crying again, which makes both of them a little nervous because now that she’s here they’ve got to figure out what to do, but after about two cries and some fairly determined wiggling from Kelly, the idea that she may want to eat comes through loud and clear.
First mealTim takes Kelly from Abby while she gets herself clear of the gown she’s in. Which Kelly did not appreciate. Moving further from the food was not something she wanted to do, so the crying got louder, but a few seconds later Abby had her breast out, and the pillows Tim had given her arranged into something that would hopefully be useful for nursing, and after that Kelly was in her arms, found the nipple with no problem and very enthusiastically nursing.“How’s it feel?” Tim asks Abby, watching Kelly gulping away.
“Really weird.” She thinks about that. “Ohhh… not sure I like that.”
“What?”
“You know how your foot feels when you sit on it too long and then get up?”
“Yeah.”
“It feels like that.”
Tim winces. “Ow.”
“Not really ow, but, hot and tingly and just weird.”
He snaps a few more pictures. Then notices there are thirty-five messages on his phone, (Five from Gibbs. For a moment he wonders if there’s a Marine Grandpa getting ready to storm the hospital.) so he hunts through the pics he’s just taken, found one he liked (not a nursing one), and sent that to his entire family list with: Kelly Marie McGee 2:14 6/16/15 6lb 2oz. Abby and Kelly are doing fine. Kelly’s having her first meal.
When he looked up from his phone, Abby was gazing down at Kelly, eyes filled with happy tears, gently stroking her very tiny ear, as she suckled away.
Screw it! If half of him ends up hanging off the side of the bed, so be it. He gently got himself onto the bed with them, half-sitting/lying on his side (and yes, his back half was dangling off) but he could rest his lips on Abby’s shoulder, offer his arm as additional support for Kelly, and just hold both of them close.
And eventually there would be the whole: when do we switch sides thing, and does she need to be burped in between, and wake up Kelly, please wake up and finish nursing, you’ve only done one breast, but right now there’s just this golden moment, wrapped around his girls, with no fear and no pain, just awash in perfect, content love.
Next
October 9, 2013
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 230
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 230: Almost Time
Maternity leave feels really strange.
Abby’s not sick, she’s not doing something else like vacation or getting ready for a wedding or taking care of Tim.
She’s just home.
Resting.
And it feels really odd.
Like usual, a minute before the alarm went off she hit it and spent a few more minutes snuggling with Tim, and then they went off script. Usually they both get up, some mornings (depending on how long and intense snuggling was) they get a shower together, some mornings he gets his shower while she handles breakfast for them, then gets hers after they eat. But usually somehow the clock rolls from 6:20 to 7:30 when they leave for work.
This morning, he got up, got his shower, and she just laid there, dozing. She’s tired. She’d really like to be sleeping, but everything hurts after a few minutes in any given position and getting from one position to another is such an effort that she can’t really keep shifting around easily enough to stay comfortable, so she can’t really sleep.
She watched him get dressed (always a treat) and he brought her some breakfast, and then headed off to work.
So she’s home, alone, with nothing to do, and it just feels really weird.
She thought about going to the pool, but getting dressed, getting into the car, driving all the way there, and then walking across the parking lot seems like more effort than it’s worth. Though that did remind her of movies in the tub, and without Tim in there, she could probably get the water deep enough to float a little, and maybe that would let her get a decent nap.
It was worth a shot.
“The set up right now is temporary. Once Gibbs retires we’ll rearrange again,” Tim’s saying as he shows Draga his new desk.
“It’ll work. Now what?”
“Paperwork.” Tim already had the stack of mandatory paperwork all new NCIS hires have to fill out on Draga’s desk.
Draga looks at it, and cocks an eyebrow. “Let me guess they want everything but my cholesterol count?”
“I think that’s on the 55-88-A.”
“Purple one, half way down. They also want your resting heart rate, blood pressure, height to waist ratio, and a few other things, something about the Federal Wellness Initiative,” Tony adds as he and Ziva walk into the bullpen. Draga doesn’t look like he’s sure if Tony is kidding or not. Tony got that line off deadpan enough that if it wasn’t for the fact that Tim knew he had made up the 55-88-A he’d have bought it. “Everything look comfortable?”
“Yeah. Compared to a cockpit this is tons of space to work in.”
Tony nods. “Then get to it. Until those are done, you’re not allowed to be on a case.”
Gibbs breezes by, clipboard in hand, dropping it on Draga’s stack of paperwork. “Bring ‘em with ya. Dead sailor in Appomattox.”
And like every other time, they all grab their go bags.
Gibbs looks at Tim and shakes his head. “Not you. You’re staying here. Appomattox is three hours away.” Gibbs hands Tim a sticky note with the vic’s name, Robert Simms, on it. “Financials, phone records, you know the drill.”
“On it.”
Tim's been trying to get her to buy a new one
but she really likes this one.Abby got a text around lunchtime. Gibbs grounded me.
Sent you to your room?
J Dead body out of Appomattox. They went off to investigate. I’m here running data.
Keeping you close to home.
Looks like it.
Anyway, for once I’m going to have the data dealt with before they even get back with a body. Looks like I’ve got a pretty good shot of being home for dinner, anything you want?
Not really. Been feeling kind of nauseous all day.
Sorry to hear it.
Yeah.
Contractions?
Nothing worth mentioning. Two in the last hour. It’s just often enough to keep me from really sleeping.
All be done soon.
Thank GOD!
Let me know if you think of anything you want.
Will do. XOXOXOXO
Love you.
Tony's cell.An hour later he’s flashing a text to Tony. Simms kept sending texts to a burner phone.
What about?
No clue. It’s a code I haven’t cracked. Looks like a book code though.
So you want every book in the house, too.
Wouldn’t hurt. Though if you feel like really looking, narrowing it down to the books that look like they get used a lot would be worthwhile. There’s a ton of these texts, so unless Simms had the book memorized, he had to use it a lot.
You know, I think you’ve just found Draga’s first real assignment. I bet he’d be good at that.
I think you’re right on that.
Anything interesting in the financials?
Still working on it. BofA’s being pissy about not having a proper notification of death since Ducky and Jimmy aren’t back yet.
Half an hour later, Tim got a text from Draga. Anything to suggest Simms had any connection to Iowa?Iowa?
Yeah. I’m looking at a Fodor’s Iowa and either Simms was exhaustively researching vacation plans or this is the code book.
Nothing in anything I’ve got suggest any connection to Iowa. Give me the ISBN.
Ten digits flashed up on Tim’s phone.
Thanks. I’ll go see if there’s a copy locally. Be careful with it, we’re going to go over it with a fine tooth comb for trace and prints.
No problem.
Broke it!He sent the next text to the whole team: Broke the code. Simms was buying something, a lot of it, and selling it, probably on base. Financials show he had storage unit in Norfolk.
Tony: Norfolk?
McGee: He’s stationed out of Norfolk.
Gibbs: What was he doing in Appomattox?
McGee: Mom died two years ago. It used to be her house. He inherited it.
Ziva: Any ID on the burner phone?
McGee: Nope. And its old enough I can’t even trace where it was sold. Whoever has it bought it like ten years ago.
Draga: Flip phone?
McGee: Maybe or a really old flat one.
Nothing popped up on his screen for several minutes so he sent another one to the whole team: ???
Ziva: Draga noticed that the bystander who found the body had a flip phone.
McGee: Got a name?
Ziva: Alvin Burns
McGee: Send me a picture of him. I’m on it.
Half an hour after that, he knew one thing, whoever the bystander was, his name wasn’t Alvin Burns. No one even remotely resembling the guy he had a picture of was called Alvin Burns. But he had Tom and Co. in the lab searching the facial recognition software for a match.
He sent his next text to Gibbs. Guy who found the body isn’t named Alvin Burns.
Got an ID?
Not yet. Lab’s working on it. He touch anything?
Borrowed Ziva’s pen.
We can run prints when you get back.
Good. Go home Tim.
???
Day’s done for you. Go home.
Only six, Jethro.
I know. Go home.
On it.
Next
Chapter 230: Almost Time
Maternity leave feels really strange.
Abby’s not sick, she’s not doing something else like vacation or getting ready for a wedding or taking care of Tim.
She’s just home.
Resting.
And it feels really odd.
Like usual, a minute before the alarm went off she hit it and spent a few more minutes snuggling with Tim, and then they went off script. Usually they both get up, some mornings (depending on how long and intense snuggling was) they get a shower together, some mornings he gets his shower while she handles breakfast for them, then gets hers after they eat. But usually somehow the clock rolls from 6:20 to 7:30 when they leave for work.
This morning, he got up, got his shower, and she just laid there, dozing. She’s tired. She’d really like to be sleeping, but everything hurts after a few minutes in any given position and getting from one position to another is such an effort that she can’t really keep shifting around easily enough to stay comfortable, so she can’t really sleep.
She watched him get dressed (always a treat) and he brought her some breakfast, and then headed off to work.
So she’s home, alone, with nothing to do, and it just feels really weird.
She thought about going to the pool, but getting dressed, getting into the car, driving all the way there, and then walking across the parking lot seems like more effort than it’s worth. Though that did remind her of movies in the tub, and without Tim in there, she could probably get the water deep enough to float a little, and maybe that would let her get a decent nap.
It was worth a shot.
“The set up right now is temporary. Once Gibbs retires we’ll rearrange again,” Tim’s saying as he shows Draga his new desk.
“It’ll work. Now what?”
“Paperwork.” Tim already had the stack of mandatory paperwork all new NCIS hires have to fill out on Draga’s desk.
Draga looks at it, and cocks an eyebrow. “Let me guess they want everything but my cholesterol count?”
“I think that’s on the 55-88-A.”
“Purple one, half way down. They also want your resting heart rate, blood pressure, height to waist ratio, and a few other things, something about the Federal Wellness Initiative,” Tony adds as he and Ziva walk into the bullpen. Draga doesn’t look like he’s sure if Tony is kidding or not. Tony got that line off deadpan enough that if it wasn’t for the fact that Tim knew he had made up the 55-88-A he’d have bought it. “Everything look comfortable?”
“Yeah. Compared to a cockpit this is tons of space to work in.”
Tony nods. “Then get to it. Until those are done, you’re not allowed to be on a case.”
Gibbs breezes by, clipboard in hand, dropping it on Draga’s stack of paperwork. “Bring ‘em with ya. Dead sailor in Appomattox.”
And like every other time, they all grab their go bags.
Gibbs looks at Tim and shakes his head. “Not you. You’re staying here. Appomattox is three hours away.” Gibbs hands Tim a sticky note with the vic’s name, Robert Simms, on it. “Financials, phone records, you know the drill.”
“On it.”
Tim's been trying to get her to buy a new onebut she really likes this one.Abby got a text around lunchtime. Gibbs grounded me.
Sent you to your room?
J Dead body out of Appomattox. They went off to investigate. I’m here running data.
Keeping you close to home.
Looks like it.
Anyway, for once I’m going to have the data dealt with before they even get back with a body. Looks like I’ve got a pretty good shot of being home for dinner, anything you want?
Not really. Been feeling kind of nauseous all day.
Sorry to hear it.
Yeah.
Contractions?
Nothing worth mentioning. Two in the last hour. It’s just often enough to keep me from really sleeping.
All be done soon.
Thank GOD!
Let me know if you think of anything you want.
Will do. XOXOXOXO
Love you.
Tony's cell.An hour later he’s flashing a text to Tony. Simms kept sending texts to a burner phone.What about?
No clue. It’s a code I haven’t cracked. Looks like a book code though.
So you want every book in the house, too.
Wouldn’t hurt. Though if you feel like really looking, narrowing it down to the books that look like they get used a lot would be worthwhile. There’s a ton of these texts, so unless Simms had the book memorized, he had to use it a lot.
You know, I think you’ve just found Draga’s first real assignment. I bet he’d be good at that.
I think you’re right on that.
Anything interesting in the financials?
Still working on it. BofA’s being pissy about not having a proper notification of death since Ducky and Jimmy aren’t back yet.
Half an hour later, Tim got a text from Draga. Anything to suggest Simms had any connection to Iowa?Iowa?
Yeah. I’m looking at a Fodor’s Iowa and either Simms was exhaustively researching vacation plans or this is the code book.
Nothing in anything I’ve got suggest any connection to Iowa. Give me the ISBN.
Ten digits flashed up on Tim’s phone.
Thanks. I’ll go see if there’s a copy locally. Be careful with it, we’re going to go over it with a fine tooth comb for trace and prints.
No problem.
Broke it!He sent the next text to the whole team: Broke the code. Simms was buying something, a lot of it, and selling it, probably on base. Financials show he had storage unit in Norfolk.
Tony: Norfolk?
McGee: He’s stationed out of Norfolk.
Gibbs: What was he doing in Appomattox?
McGee: Mom died two years ago. It used to be her house. He inherited it.
Ziva: Any ID on the burner phone?
McGee: Nope. And its old enough I can’t even trace where it was sold. Whoever has it bought it like ten years ago.
Draga: Flip phone?
McGee: Maybe or a really old flat one.
Nothing popped up on his screen for several minutes so he sent another one to the whole team: ???
Ziva: Draga noticed that the bystander who found the body had a flip phone.
McGee: Got a name?
Ziva: Alvin Burns
McGee: Send me a picture of him. I’m on it.
Half an hour after that, he knew one thing, whoever the bystander was, his name wasn’t Alvin Burns. No one even remotely resembling the guy he had a picture of was called Alvin Burns. But he had Tom and Co. in the lab searching the facial recognition software for a match.
He sent his next text to Gibbs. Guy who found the body isn’t named Alvin Burns.
Got an ID?
Not yet. Lab’s working on it. He touch anything?
Borrowed Ziva’s pen.
We can run prints when you get back.
Good. Go home Tim.
???
Day’s done for you. Go home.
Only six, Jethro.
I know. Go home.
On it.
Next
