Fic: Give Me Love - Part Five
Sep. 1st, 2017 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missmara13Sorry for the long wait. Been busy with work and other things.
Give Me Love - Part Five
As it turned out, all Kirsten needed to say to Seth was that Ryan was back in Newport, and he was practically begging to come home. They got him a flight for the next afternoon, and Sandy asked Ryan to go out with Summer and Marissa after the hospital so they could have a long talk with Seth about the past summer.
That was how he ended up wandering around the pier at 9pm, bracketed by the two girls, and carrying their shopping bags. "Tell me again why I'm your pack mule?" Ryan asked.
"Because of all these muscles," Summer teased, squeezing his bicep.
"We could never carry all these by ourselves," Marissa agreed, laughing.
"Summer, hey."
Summer turned, smiling. "Zach, hey," she said. "This is Ryan Atwood..."
"Right, hey, Summer's mentioned you," Zach said. "I'm just glad someone other than me is carrying Summer's bags for once," he added.
"I'm not that bad," Summer said.
"Yes, yes you are," Ryan replied. "Man, come on, help a guy out?" he asked. "I'm drowning in... estrogen here."
Zach laughed, but took some of the bags. "No problem. You gonna be back at Harbor next week?"
"Yeah, I'm suppose to go in tomorrow to figure out my schedule with the guidance counselor and Dr. Kim, looking forward to it," Ryan said, the last part sarcastically.
"Is someone gonna go sit with Lucy?" Summer asked.
"Yeah, Caleb said he would."
"Who's Lucy?"
"I figured that was yours to tell," Summer told Ryan, bumping his shoulder with hers.
"Lucy's my... my daughter," Ryan said. "She's 9 days old, and 3 months premature."
"Whoa," Zach said.
"Yep, I'm the car stealing, teenage father," Ryan said.
"Hey, no, it's cool... well, not... you know what I mean."
"Don't worry about it," Ryan said, laughing.
"When Chino isn't brooding, he's pretty chill," Summer assured Zach.
"But I did hear your dad is Senator Stevens, so you may not wanna be seen hanging out with me," Ryan added.
"As long as the car theft is in the past, it's all good," Zach said. "My dad is all about everyone deserving a second chance."
"Good to know."
"So what are you guys doing shopping this late? And torturing this poor guy with it?" Zach asked.
"Seth Cohen got back this afternoon, so the Cohens asked us to keep Ryan busy, because there will be yelling," Summer said.
"Can you blame them? He bails on Newport to hang out in Portland," Marissa said. "At least when I bailed on dealing with my mother, I stayed in the house and just got drunk constantly. He'll be lucky if he's allowed to go anywhere but school at all until Junior Year is over."
"I think that exact punishment was being discussed," Ryan agreed. "If I was there, Seth would keep trying to get me to take his side, or he'd find some way to deflect towards me... so I get to hang out with the most gorgeous girls in California."
"Suck up," Summer said.
Marissa laughed. "Always a charmer," she said.
"We should hang out," Zach told Ryan. "Keep you from the estrogen overload."
"Yes, thank you," Ryan said. "I mean, I don't know how much free time I'm gonna have. Until Lucy's out of the hospital, I'll be going there everyday after school, and then I've got this paid internship at The Newport Group, then home to take care of Lucy."
"You gotta take the occasional day off, Chino," Summer said.
"Maybe," Ryan said.
"Well, at school at least," Zach said. "Between classes and stuff. I don't really like hanging out with the rest of the water polo team, they're kinda jerks."
"Kinda?" Ryan said. "My very first night in Newport, they kicked my ass on the beach. And almost killed me by kicking my ass and leaving me in a burning house..."
"Luke went back and pulled you out," Marissa corrected, lightly swatting his shoulder.
"Yeah, Luke ended up being okay. The rest of them... They even turned on Luke after his dad came out."
"See? I need you to save me from having to hang out with them," Zach said. "Whataya say?"
"Alright, sounds good," Ryan agreed.
~~~
When Ryan got back to the house at around 10:30, it was quiet. Wandering into the kitchen, he found the Cohens still gathered there, Seth on the 'punishment' stool. Ryan gestured slightly, asking if he should leave again, but Kirsten shook his head. "How was your night, Ryan?" she asked.
"Fine," Ryan replied. "Welcome back, Seth."
"What did you guys do?" Kirsten pressed.
"The girls went shopping before I met up with them, I carried their bags, we got food at the diner," Ryan said. "Ran into Zach Stevens, too. Nice guy."
"Good," Kirsten said. "Someone else to socialize with, since Seth is grounded for four and a half months."
"What! Mom!" Seth protested.
"It's the same amount of time you were gone for," Kirsten said. "Seems fair to me."
"Is he grounded?" Seth asked.
"No. Because We knew why and where Ryan was going," Sandy said. "Because he was going so that he could own up to his mistakes and take care of his child."
"Because he stayed away because he felt like he needed to, not because he was throwing a tantrum, and when things changed, he came home."
"Starting to think I should stayed away longer tonight," Ryan put in.
"Cool, good to know if I wanna get out of Newport I should get someone pregnant," Seth said.
"Yeah, good luck since Summer doesn't even wanna look at you," Ryan said. "It's not like Theresa got pregnant on purpose. Condoms have a shelf life, the one we used was past it and broke. Keep that in mind if ever you're manage to convince someone to sleep with you, and get new ones first." He shook his head. "I'm going to bed," he concluded.
"Sleep well," Kirsten called after him.
~~~
The next morning, Ryan was woken by the sound of the pool house doors being rattled, and drowsily sat up. It only took a moment to recognize Seth's silohuette through the curtains, the flailing a giveaway, and with a sigh he got up and unlocked the door, trying not to laugh as Seth gave it a sharp tug at the same moment and fell flat on his ass. "Graceful," Ryan commented before heading back into the pool house. "What do you want, Seth?"
"Some classic Seth/Ryan time, of course!" Seth said.
"Can't. I overslept, and I need to show, eat something, and get to the hospital to spend time with Lucy..."
"You can skip for a day..." Seth began, only to stop as Ryan turned, glaring. "You don't need to..."
"Yes, yes I do," Ryan said. "My daughter is twelve days old. Right now her world consists of two things: a plastic and glass box that she spends her nights in, and her daddy coming and holding her, talking to her, and telling her stories during the day. I am not going to leave my daughter in a plastic and glass box all day because you're selfish."
"She won't even know the difference!"
"But I will," Ryan said. "I'll know that when my daughter was less than two weeks old, I bailed on her because my idiot brother wanted to hang out and thought his needs and wants were more important than hers were, and I agreed." He regarded Seth coldly for a moment. "Does that sound like something you think I'd do, Seth?"
"But we haven't seen each other all summer!"
"Maybe if you hadn't sailed away like a little bitch, then given up and gone to Portland, we coulda seen each other. Maybe if you'd taken my calls instead of ignoring them, we coulda talked. But no, because you are the most important person in the universe, screw everyone else, you ran off like a spoiled brat. While I spent eight hours a day working construction, then going home and dealing with shit there, and now I'm dealing with a sick baby who needs me, but I'm suppose to roll over and be your're bestest bud and spend time with you instead." Ryan stared at him for a moment, not entirely surprised by the stunned look on Seth's face. "No. My daughter comes first, last, and everything in between. Get used to it, Seth, some of us have to be adults. Now get out." With that, Ryan grabbed clothes from the wicker drawers and headed into the bathroom.
~~~
"We're in none of the same classes," Seth complained when he met up with Ryan at lunch a week later on their first day back at Harbor.
"It's a travesty," Ryan said dryly. "Hey, guys," he greeted as Summer, Marissa, and Zach joined them.
"I think I hate our English teacher," Summer said with a sigh.
"She's not that bad."
"She wants us to read Hemingway," Summer said. "I've read some of it, he's an ass."
"Yeah, so in your paper about him prove that," Ryan told her.
"Seriously, that's what we're going to talk about?" Seth asked.
"You're totally right, Cohen," Summer said. "Coop, is Caleb being weirdly nice to you, too? Or is it just Chino?"
"He has been," Marissa admitted. "He said he was proud of me for cutting back on my drinking the last week... it was weird."
"That's good though, that you've cut back," Ryan said.
"Yeah. After I found out you were back, and I talked to Summer, and she told me the reason you wouldn't take my calls all summer was because I was getting drunk and calling you when you were at work, or in the middle of the night, and it was making things harder on you when they were already tough. I messed up."
"Everyone does," Ryan said. "Hey, I used a condom I knew was way out of date."
"Condoms can go out of date?" Marissa asked wide eyed.
"If kept in a box, in a drawer, it's like five years," Zach said. "But in a wallet or something? Could be a year or less."
"Yeah, the one I had, my brother Trey gave to me when I was 14. And it was in my wallet," Ryan said.
"I didn't know that..." Marissa said.
"Neither did I until Chino mentioned it," Summer said. "But Zach, you are surprisingly knowledgable."
"My dad put it this way. He'd rather I didn't have sex before marriage, but if I do? He wants both parties to be safe about it," Zach said.
"Your dad is a smart man," Ryan said. "Being told not to, does not keep it from happening. But being safe about it prevents... lots of stuff." He shrugged. "But for the record, if anyone ever refers to my daughter as a 'mistake', I will hurt them. Seth."
The girls and Zach laughed while Seth sputtered.
~~~
Ryan's life fell into a routine where he'd get up and go to school, then drop Seth off at the house to continue his grounding before heading to the hospital to spend some time with Lucy. Since he couldn't hold her the whole time, due to her tiny body not quite being able to regulate her body heat yet, he'd study and do some of his homework while sitting next to the incubator. When visiting hours ended, usually right after a feeding, Ryan would gently give Lucy a kiss on the forehead, then go home to have a late dinner, usually with either Sandy or Kirsten at least sitting with him to talk about school, though sometimes one of them waited to eat, too.
Ryan usually tried to spend a little bit of time playing video games with Seth, the one thing he was allowed to do while grounded, but he also usually found himself falling asleep in the middle of a game and calling it quits. Seth didn't like the arrangement, but quickly learned how to maximize the Seth/Ryan time by monopolizing the conversation on the drive to and from school, as well as during breakfast and their video game time.
One one hand, Ryan understood. The entire previous year he had let Seth dominate their conversations, no matter what was going on with Ryan himself, so of course now Seth was struggling to deal with that change on top of all the other ones. On the other hand, Ryan was still worried about Lucy, and his only chance to talk to Sandy or Kirsten was while he also tried to eat his late dinner before Seth started bugging him to play games. And the only chance he had to really talk to anyone other than the Cohens was during lunch at school, because Summer was an expert at talking right over Seth, and both Marissa and Zach had caught onto her tactics for stearing the conversation in other directions.
After three weeks of it, with Lucy almost a month and a half old and hopefully being released within another week, Kirsten was waiting when Ryan dropped off Seth and hurried out to catch Ryan. "I know you want to spend the afternoon with Lucy, but you and I need to run a few errands, okay?"
"Okay," Ryan said, a little wary.
"Seth, Rosa is under instructions to make sure your homework is done first. Then you can watch tv or play video games."
Seth nodded, giving Ryan a confused look, but Ryan could only shrug.
As Ryan pulled back down the driveway with Kirsten in the passenger seat, he glanced over at her. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine," Kirsten said. "We'll stop by and see Lucy real quick first, okay? Then we can go get our errands done so you can go back for a little while before visiting hours end."
"Okay, thanks."
"Don't worry," Kirsten assured him. "Trust me, you won't mind these errands."
"What are they?"
"You'll see soon enough."
~~~
At the hospital, Ryan held Lucy for a little bit, noticing that most of the monitors had been removed before he got there. "What's going on?" Ryan asked the doctor as he approached.
"I wanted to let him hear it from you himself," Kirsten said.
"We're ready to release her," the doctor said with a smile.
"What? Really?"
"Tomorrow afternoon," the doctor confirmed with a smile.
"The errands are to get the car seat, and preemie sized clothes, so she has something to wear home," Kirsten said. "And to make sure we have enough formula."
"We'll give you some that has extra nutrients, help her put on a little more weight over the next few weeks, but she's doing very well, and it's clear that between you and your parents, she has plenty of people to take care of her."
"Yeah," Ryan said, looking down. "You hear that? You're coming home tomorrow," he told Lucy.
"I did tell Dad already, since I need to start working from home," Kirsten said. "And of course Sandy knows..."
"That's okay, I don't mind that Caleb knows," Ryan said. "He's been surprisingly good to the two of us. And Sandy has as much right to know as you do." He shook his head slightly. "Uh... When tomorrow? You said afternoon?"
"Normally we'd release in the morning, but your mom asked that we wait, so that you could be here for it," the doctor explained. "So after school, come over as usual, you may have to wait a little while if I'm with another patient, but we'll have everything but final signatures ready, so once I'm able to get to you, it won't be long."
"Okay, good," Ryan said. "Is there anything special we need to make sure we have at home for her? Besides the basic baby stuff?"
"I went over that with your mom, but the main thing is to make sure there's plenty of blankets. She's regulating her temperature better now, but we still want to make sure she's warm enough. Hats and socks, too."
"Yeah, we've got a lot, but we can get more," Ryan said.
~~~
Kirsten tried very hard not to show her amusement at how intently Ryan was studying the safety guidelines. She was, of course, happy and proud that he took Lucy's safety so seriously, but it was still an odd sight to see him going back and forth between a few of the seats. She had made it clear on the drive over to the store that money was not an issue when it came to Lucy's safety, and Ryan hadn't given more than a token protest and a promise to pay them back, which Kirsten had brushed off as unneccesary.
Ryan had also wanted to get more blankets, hats, and socks, but Kirsten had convinced him to wait a little while, that they had enough for at least a few days without doing laundry, and that would last them a long enough to get more on the weekend. She couldn't talk him out of, and honestly didn't try that hard, getting a blanket with a large, realistic but friendly looking, lion on it to be the blanket she was wrapped in to come home.
After she dropped Ryan off back at the hospital, she took everything inside and made sure things were ready for that night when Ryan got home.
~~~
Ryan was glad to see the car seat already installed when Kirsten picked him up that night, but insisted on looking it over himself, even after she told him she had it installed at the fire station to make sure it was done properly. Once he was satisfied that it was, they headed back to the house. When the walked in, there was Thai take out on the table, and Sandy gave him a hug.
"It's about time, huh kid?" the man asked with a grin.
"Yeah," Ryan said.
"We should have a party to..." Seth began.
"No," Ryan countered firmly. "I wanna go get her tomorrow after school, then bring her home and just... enjoy having her at home. Quiet, calm... maybe eat dinner at a normal time for once..."
"Exactly the plan," Sandy said.
"Maybe we can have people over one or two at a time the next day," Kirsten said. "But keep it low key."
"Yeah, that'll be fine. But tomorrow, just us."
To Be Continued...
Give Me Love - Part Five
As it turned out, all Kirsten needed to say to Seth was that Ryan was back in Newport, and he was practically begging to come home. They got him a flight for the next afternoon, and Sandy asked Ryan to go out with Summer and Marissa after the hospital so they could have a long talk with Seth about the past summer.
That was how he ended up wandering around the pier at 9pm, bracketed by the two girls, and carrying their shopping bags. "Tell me again why I'm your pack mule?" Ryan asked.
"Because of all these muscles," Summer teased, squeezing his bicep.
"We could never carry all these by ourselves," Marissa agreed, laughing.
"Summer, hey."
Summer turned, smiling. "Zach, hey," she said. "This is Ryan Atwood..."
"Right, hey, Summer's mentioned you," Zach said. "I'm just glad someone other than me is carrying Summer's bags for once," he added.
"I'm not that bad," Summer said.
"Yes, yes you are," Ryan replied. "Man, come on, help a guy out?" he asked. "I'm drowning in... estrogen here."
Zach laughed, but took some of the bags. "No problem. You gonna be back at Harbor next week?"
"Yeah, I'm suppose to go in tomorrow to figure out my schedule with the guidance counselor and Dr. Kim, looking forward to it," Ryan said, the last part sarcastically.
"Is someone gonna go sit with Lucy?" Summer asked.
"Yeah, Caleb said he would."
"Who's Lucy?"
"I figured that was yours to tell," Summer told Ryan, bumping his shoulder with hers.
"Lucy's my... my daughter," Ryan said. "She's 9 days old, and 3 months premature."
"Whoa," Zach said.
"Yep, I'm the car stealing, teenage father," Ryan said.
"Hey, no, it's cool... well, not... you know what I mean."
"Don't worry about it," Ryan said, laughing.
"When Chino isn't brooding, he's pretty chill," Summer assured Zach.
"But I did hear your dad is Senator Stevens, so you may not wanna be seen hanging out with me," Ryan added.
"As long as the car theft is in the past, it's all good," Zach said. "My dad is all about everyone deserving a second chance."
"Good to know."
"So what are you guys doing shopping this late? And torturing this poor guy with it?" Zach asked.
"Seth Cohen got back this afternoon, so the Cohens asked us to keep Ryan busy, because there will be yelling," Summer said.
"Can you blame them? He bails on Newport to hang out in Portland," Marissa said. "At least when I bailed on dealing with my mother, I stayed in the house and just got drunk constantly. He'll be lucky if he's allowed to go anywhere but school at all until Junior Year is over."
"I think that exact punishment was being discussed," Ryan agreed. "If I was there, Seth would keep trying to get me to take his side, or he'd find some way to deflect towards me... so I get to hang out with the most gorgeous girls in California."
"Suck up," Summer said.
Marissa laughed. "Always a charmer," she said.
"We should hang out," Zach told Ryan. "Keep you from the estrogen overload."
"Yes, thank you," Ryan said. "I mean, I don't know how much free time I'm gonna have. Until Lucy's out of the hospital, I'll be going there everyday after school, and then I've got this paid internship at The Newport Group, then home to take care of Lucy."
"You gotta take the occasional day off, Chino," Summer said.
"Maybe," Ryan said.
"Well, at school at least," Zach said. "Between classes and stuff. I don't really like hanging out with the rest of the water polo team, they're kinda jerks."
"Kinda?" Ryan said. "My very first night in Newport, they kicked my ass on the beach. And almost killed me by kicking my ass and leaving me in a burning house..."
"Luke went back and pulled you out," Marissa corrected, lightly swatting his shoulder.
"Yeah, Luke ended up being okay. The rest of them... They even turned on Luke after his dad came out."
"See? I need you to save me from having to hang out with them," Zach said. "Whataya say?"
"Alright, sounds good," Ryan agreed.
~~~
When Ryan got back to the house at around 10:30, it was quiet. Wandering into the kitchen, he found the Cohens still gathered there, Seth on the 'punishment' stool. Ryan gestured slightly, asking if he should leave again, but Kirsten shook his head. "How was your night, Ryan?" she asked.
"Fine," Ryan replied. "Welcome back, Seth."
"What did you guys do?" Kirsten pressed.
"The girls went shopping before I met up with them, I carried their bags, we got food at the diner," Ryan said. "Ran into Zach Stevens, too. Nice guy."
"Good," Kirsten said. "Someone else to socialize with, since Seth is grounded for four and a half months."
"What! Mom!" Seth protested.
"It's the same amount of time you were gone for," Kirsten said. "Seems fair to me."
"Is he grounded?" Seth asked.
"No. Because We knew why and where Ryan was going," Sandy said. "Because he was going so that he could own up to his mistakes and take care of his child."
"Because he stayed away because he felt like he needed to, not because he was throwing a tantrum, and when things changed, he came home."
"Starting to think I should stayed away longer tonight," Ryan put in.
"Cool, good to know if I wanna get out of Newport I should get someone pregnant," Seth said.
"Yeah, good luck since Summer doesn't even wanna look at you," Ryan said. "It's not like Theresa got pregnant on purpose. Condoms have a shelf life, the one we used was past it and broke. Keep that in mind if ever you're manage to convince someone to sleep with you, and get new ones first." He shook his head. "I'm going to bed," he concluded.
"Sleep well," Kirsten called after him.
~~~
The next morning, Ryan was woken by the sound of the pool house doors being rattled, and drowsily sat up. It only took a moment to recognize Seth's silohuette through the curtains, the flailing a giveaway, and with a sigh he got up and unlocked the door, trying not to laugh as Seth gave it a sharp tug at the same moment and fell flat on his ass. "Graceful," Ryan commented before heading back into the pool house. "What do you want, Seth?"
"Some classic Seth/Ryan time, of course!" Seth said.
"Can't. I overslept, and I need to show, eat something, and get to the hospital to spend time with Lucy..."
"You can skip for a day..." Seth began, only to stop as Ryan turned, glaring. "You don't need to..."
"Yes, yes I do," Ryan said. "My daughter is twelve days old. Right now her world consists of two things: a plastic and glass box that she spends her nights in, and her daddy coming and holding her, talking to her, and telling her stories during the day. I am not going to leave my daughter in a plastic and glass box all day because you're selfish."
"She won't even know the difference!"
"But I will," Ryan said. "I'll know that when my daughter was less than two weeks old, I bailed on her because my idiot brother wanted to hang out and thought his needs and wants were more important than hers were, and I agreed." He regarded Seth coldly for a moment. "Does that sound like something you think I'd do, Seth?"
"But we haven't seen each other all summer!"
"Maybe if you hadn't sailed away like a little bitch, then given up and gone to Portland, we coulda seen each other. Maybe if you'd taken my calls instead of ignoring them, we coulda talked. But no, because you are the most important person in the universe, screw everyone else, you ran off like a spoiled brat. While I spent eight hours a day working construction, then going home and dealing with shit there, and now I'm dealing with a sick baby who needs me, but I'm suppose to roll over and be your're bestest bud and spend time with you instead." Ryan stared at him for a moment, not entirely surprised by the stunned look on Seth's face. "No. My daughter comes first, last, and everything in between. Get used to it, Seth, some of us have to be adults. Now get out." With that, Ryan grabbed clothes from the wicker drawers and headed into the bathroom.
~~~
"We're in none of the same classes," Seth complained when he met up with Ryan at lunch a week later on their first day back at Harbor.
"It's a travesty," Ryan said dryly. "Hey, guys," he greeted as Summer, Marissa, and Zach joined them.
"I think I hate our English teacher," Summer said with a sigh.
"She's not that bad."
"She wants us to read Hemingway," Summer said. "I've read some of it, he's an ass."
"Yeah, so in your paper about him prove that," Ryan told her.
"Seriously, that's what we're going to talk about?" Seth asked.
"You're totally right, Cohen," Summer said. "Coop, is Caleb being weirdly nice to you, too? Or is it just Chino?"
"He has been," Marissa admitted. "He said he was proud of me for cutting back on my drinking the last week... it was weird."
"That's good though, that you've cut back," Ryan said.
"Yeah. After I found out you were back, and I talked to Summer, and she told me the reason you wouldn't take my calls all summer was because I was getting drunk and calling you when you were at work, or in the middle of the night, and it was making things harder on you when they were already tough. I messed up."
"Everyone does," Ryan said. "Hey, I used a condom I knew was way out of date."
"Condoms can go out of date?" Marissa asked wide eyed.
"If kept in a box, in a drawer, it's like five years," Zach said. "But in a wallet or something? Could be a year or less."
"Yeah, the one I had, my brother Trey gave to me when I was 14. And it was in my wallet," Ryan said.
"I didn't know that..." Marissa said.
"Neither did I until Chino mentioned it," Summer said. "But Zach, you are surprisingly knowledgable."
"My dad put it this way. He'd rather I didn't have sex before marriage, but if I do? He wants both parties to be safe about it," Zach said.
"Your dad is a smart man," Ryan said. "Being told not to, does not keep it from happening. But being safe about it prevents... lots of stuff." He shrugged. "But for the record, if anyone ever refers to my daughter as a 'mistake', I will hurt them. Seth."
The girls and Zach laughed while Seth sputtered.
~~~
Ryan's life fell into a routine where he'd get up and go to school, then drop Seth off at the house to continue his grounding before heading to the hospital to spend some time with Lucy. Since he couldn't hold her the whole time, due to her tiny body not quite being able to regulate her body heat yet, he'd study and do some of his homework while sitting next to the incubator. When visiting hours ended, usually right after a feeding, Ryan would gently give Lucy a kiss on the forehead, then go home to have a late dinner, usually with either Sandy or Kirsten at least sitting with him to talk about school, though sometimes one of them waited to eat, too.
Ryan usually tried to spend a little bit of time playing video games with Seth, the one thing he was allowed to do while grounded, but he also usually found himself falling asleep in the middle of a game and calling it quits. Seth didn't like the arrangement, but quickly learned how to maximize the Seth/Ryan time by monopolizing the conversation on the drive to and from school, as well as during breakfast and their video game time.
One one hand, Ryan understood. The entire previous year he had let Seth dominate their conversations, no matter what was going on with Ryan himself, so of course now Seth was struggling to deal with that change on top of all the other ones. On the other hand, Ryan was still worried about Lucy, and his only chance to talk to Sandy or Kirsten was while he also tried to eat his late dinner before Seth started bugging him to play games. And the only chance he had to really talk to anyone other than the Cohens was during lunch at school, because Summer was an expert at talking right over Seth, and both Marissa and Zach had caught onto her tactics for stearing the conversation in other directions.
After three weeks of it, with Lucy almost a month and a half old and hopefully being released within another week, Kirsten was waiting when Ryan dropped off Seth and hurried out to catch Ryan. "I know you want to spend the afternoon with Lucy, but you and I need to run a few errands, okay?"
"Okay," Ryan said, a little wary.
"Seth, Rosa is under instructions to make sure your homework is done first. Then you can watch tv or play video games."
Seth nodded, giving Ryan a confused look, but Ryan could only shrug.
As Ryan pulled back down the driveway with Kirsten in the passenger seat, he glanced over at her. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine," Kirsten said. "We'll stop by and see Lucy real quick first, okay? Then we can go get our errands done so you can go back for a little while before visiting hours end."
"Okay, thanks."
"Don't worry," Kirsten assured him. "Trust me, you won't mind these errands."
"What are they?"
"You'll see soon enough."
~~~
At the hospital, Ryan held Lucy for a little bit, noticing that most of the monitors had been removed before he got there. "What's going on?" Ryan asked the doctor as he approached.
"I wanted to let him hear it from you himself," Kirsten said.
"We're ready to release her," the doctor said with a smile.
"What? Really?"
"Tomorrow afternoon," the doctor confirmed with a smile.
"The errands are to get the car seat, and preemie sized clothes, so she has something to wear home," Kirsten said. "And to make sure we have enough formula."
"We'll give you some that has extra nutrients, help her put on a little more weight over the next few weeks, but she's doing very well, and it's clear that between you and your parents, she has plenty of people to take care of her."
"Yeah," Ryan said, looking down. "You hear that? You're coming home tomorrow," he told Lucy.
"I did tell Dad already, since I need to start working from home," Kirsten said. "And of course Sandy knows..."
"That's okay, I don't mind that Caleb knows," Ryan said. "He's been surprisingly good to the two of us. And Sandy has as much right to know as you do." He shook his head slightly. "Uh... When tomorrow? You said afternoon?"
"Normally we'd release in the morning, but your mom asked that we wait, so that you could be here for it," the doctor explained. "So after school, come over as usual, you may have to wait a little while if I'm with another patient, but we'll have everything but final signatures ready, so once I'm able to get to you, it won't be long."
"Okay, good," Ryan said. "Is there anything special we need to make sure we have at home for her? Besides the basic baby stuff?"
"I went over that with your mom, but the main thing is to make sure there's plenty of blankets. She's regulating her temperature better now, but we still want to make sure she's warm enough. Hats and socks, too."
"Yeah, we've got a lot, but we can get more," Ryan said.
~~~
Kirsten tried very hard not to show her amusement at how intently Ryan was studying the safety guidelines. She was, of course, happy and proud that he took Lucy's safety so seriously, but it was still an odd sight to see him going back and forth between a few of the seats. She had made it clear on the drive over to the store that money was not an issue when it came to Lucy's safety, and Ryan hadn't given more than a token protest and a promise to pay them back, which Kirsten had brushed off as unneccesary.
Ryan had also wanted to get more blankets, hats, and socks, but Kirsten had convinced him to wait a little while, that they had enough for at least a few days without doing laundry, and that would last them a long enough to get more on the weekend. She couldn't talk him out of, and honestly didn't try that hard, getting a blanket with a large, realistic but friendly looking, lion on it to be the blanket she was wrapped in to come home.
After she dropped Ryan off back at the hospital, she took everything inside and made sure things were ready for that night when Ryan got home.
~~~
Ryan was glad to see the car seat already installed when Kirsten picked him up that night, but insisted on looking it over himself, even after she told him she had it installed at the fire station to make sure it was done properly. Once he was satisfied that it was, they headed back to the house. When the walked in, there was Thai take out on the table, and Sandy gave him a hug.
"It's about time, huh kid?" the man asked with a grin.
"Yeah," Ryan said.
"We should have a party to..." Seth began.
"No," Ryan countered firmly. "I wanna go get her tomorrow after school, then bring her home and just... enjoy having her at home. Quiet, calm... maybe eat dinner at a normal time for once..."
"Exactly the plan," Sandy said.
"Maybe we can have people over one or two at a time the next day," Kirsten said. "But keep it low key."
"Yeah, that'll be fine. But tomorrow, just us."
To Be Continued...
