Reading Time: 91 Minutes

Title: Made from Love
Author: EAlexBeau
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, Hurt/Comfort, Male Pregnancy, Romance
Relationship(s): Evan Buckley/Tommy Kinard
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Major Character Death, Character Bashing, Anatomy Descriptions/Medical Descriptions, Past Domestic Violence, Canon Violence, Discussion of Infant Death (No Actual Death), NICU Descriptions, Medical Negligence, Lawsuits, Discussion of Restraining Orders
Author Note: Please see main story page for notes
Beta: FaerlyGraceful
Alpha: Irrelevant86, FaerlyGraceful
Word Count: 65,188
Summary: Bobby said that Buck would be okay and that ‘they’ would need him. He never said that ‘they’ meant the One-Eighteen, and Buck is starting to think Bobby knew something he didn’t. But he was right. ‘They’ did need him and he would, eventually, be okay.
Artist: Jilly James

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Chapter Ten

Athena arrived in the middle of Buck’s official labor nurse, an equally bright, upbeat woman with her dreads pulled back named Diana, doing a vitals check. Tommy had already given Diana a rundown of who Buck did and did not want to see, including photos, so she simply gave Athena a sharp smile and warned her not to upset her patient before she let them have some privacy.

“So that abnormal blood work that you had…” Athena prompted after she took a seat across from Tommy by Buck’s bed.

“The Army tested me for the carrier gene and pregnancy. Both of the tests came back positive,” Buck sheepishly explained. It was never fun when her stepmother caught someone keeping something from her. No matter what, Athena always found out the truth and then it left her looking at you the same way she looked at the people she wished she could arrest for pure idiocy.

“How far along are you?”

“Now? Thirty-two weeks. When I found out? Somewhere around twenty-eight to twenty-nine weeks. I didn’t even know I was a carrier before that!”

“Well your parents somehow get worse and worse every time I learn something new about your childhood,” Athena grumbled. “Why’d you call me, baby? Why not Maddie or someone else”

“I need a mom right now,” Buck confessed. “My mom sucks and probably wouldn’t come even if she wasn’t on the other side of the country. And Maddie is just… I don’t want to stress her out when she’s so close to the end of her own pregnancy, but also I don’t need anymore stress. Maddie and I have both blurred the line of our relationship in the past, putting Maddie in a more parental role in my life. I don’t see her like that anymore, but sometimes Maddie still sees the little kid that she helped raise and forgets that I’m actually in my thirties now and not the nine-year-old I was when she graduated high school. Plus, she’d just tell Chim and try to bring him along and I really, really don’t want to see him right now.”

“So you called me?”

“So I called you. Because you’ve had a baby before and I really, really need someone who’s been where I am right now and can tell me that everything’s going to be okay. I know that we’ve never really had that kind of relationship, but you’re the only real grandparent figure that this baby is going to have.”

Buck hadn’t expected Athena to react the way that she did. Her eyes teared up and she reached over to grab his hand, giving Buck and then Tommy a watery smile. “I would be honored to fulfill that role in your child’s life. Does my new grandchild have a name yet?

“That’s actually something that we wanted to talk to you about,” Tommy piped up. “With everything that’s happened since that call,” he didn’t need to specify which one, although they’d each been out on at least one call since Bobby’s last one, “the way that everyone’s been dealing with their grief, it just hasn’t felt right to tell everyone about the baby yet. And we don’t want to add to anyone’s grief or make the situation harder than it already is, but there is a name that we want to use.”

That was the point when Buck took over for his partner. “We don’t know if the baby’s a boy or a girl yet, but with your permission and your blessing, we’d like to name them after Pops. For a boy, we thought we could make his full name Robert and everyone could call him Robbie or Little B. For a girl, Barbara and her nickname could be Bobbi. It feels like it would hurt less to call Pops’ granddaughter by his name than it would to call his grandson. But it also feels like it was always meant to be this baby’s name. Like Pops sent this baby to let me, to let us, know that it would be okay?”

Athena sniffled and wiped a tear from her eye before it could fall. “I think your father would’ve been honored to share a name with his grandchild.”

“We didn’t pick it just because Bobby died,” Tommy promised her. “This would have been the baby’s name if we’d found out at the beginning while he was still with us and picked a name with nine months to prepare. And we don’t want to put any pressure on them or treat them like they’ll be in his shadow or absolutely have to live up to Bobby’s legacy. We just want to give our baby a piece of the grandparents that they’ll never get to know.”

“Turns out that Lynn, Tommy’s mother’s name, is a unisex name so we chose that for the baby’s middle name. Robert Lynn or Barbara Lynn Kinard.”

“I think that’s a beautiful way to honor your parents, boys and those are both wonderful names. This child is damn lucky to have so many people looking out for them in the next life, because they’re going to need some guardian angels with you two as dads. I can already see all of the chaos and shenanigans that this little one will get up to.”

“Oh god, we’re in so much trouble, aren’t we?” Buck moaned.

“I think if anything could get me to retire early it would be this baby. Just so I can kick back and watch the chaos instead of needing to be a part of it,” Athena warned them, completely serious.

“I think we should wait until the baby is crawling to worry about all or that,” Tommy decided, obviously trying to calm Buck down. “For now, let’s worry about getting through the next few days and just making sure that the baby gets here safely.”

“Fuck!” Buck yelled, shooting upright in the bed and then collapsing back down again as another contraction rippled through his abdomen, this one stronger and longer than the last and with less time in between them.

“Another contraction? Do you need me to grab the nurse?” Tommy checked.

“No. I mean yes, I’m having a contraction, but I don’t need anyone right now. I was just thinking about what you said about getting through the next few days and I remembered the court hearing for tomorrow. There’s no way that Dr. Emerson is going to let me just like, leave, and then come back after the hearing.”

“What hearing is this?”

“I got served with an emergency restraining order this morning from Connor and Kameron Riley. We have a hearing in the morning to either make the order permanent or dismiss it.” All Buck wanted to do right now was to run his hands over his bump to self soothe like he had been doing for the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately his bump hadn’t been very big to begin with and now it was completely taken up by the monitors that Dr. Emerson had heavily emphasized the importance of so that they could keep track of his labor and how the baby was reacting to it since it was so pre-term. Buck wished that he knew how to read the different results and graphs that the monitors were spitting out, maybe that would bring him some comfort instead, but that was beyond his basic EMT skills. For now, Buck would just need to take comfort from Tommy’s hand in his and trust the doctors and nurses on staff.

“Isn’t that the couple that you donated your sperm to?” Athena interrogated him.

“Apparently not, considering carriers don’t produce sperm. I’ve been trying to get in touch with them to tell them that, but the Rileys have been ignoring me,” Buck explained to his stepmother. “Now they’re claiming that my two texts and single phone call before they both blocked me are harassment and so they got a restraining order against me.”

Tommy wasn’t quite as nice about it when he continued to tell Athena what was going on. “Their lawyer waited until the last moment to have Evan served with the order and the notice to appear in court for the hearing. If we didn’t already have an attorney assisting us with a lawsuit against the fertility clinic the Rileys chose then we would have been screwed. Now we have the joy of having two attorneys on retainer.

“Speaking of our lovely new lawyer I’m going to call Ms. Hawthorne now and update her on what’s going on. Maybe she’ll be able to arrange for you to attend virtually.”

“I have a few contacts I can reach out to if it’s necessary. Anything you two need help with, you just let me know and I’ll see what I can do,” Athena promised them.

After Buck called and left a voicemail for Ms. Hawthorne, they decided to try and distract him from his contractions by chatting a bit more about Buck and Tommy’s plan for the hearing and their lawsuit. Diana came in a few times to check all of the different monitors and Buck’s vitals while they did, joking with the family and coaching Buck through the two contractions that she happened to be present for. She tried to suggest that they all get some sleep, offering to pull the couch out for Athena and to have a recliner brought in for Tommy, but the three of them found it impossible. Finally, around two AM, six hours after Buck had first arrived at the hospital, Dr. Emerson checked back in with them. She brought a serious looking woman with a tight updo with her. Buck wasn’t sure what to think of this woman with a white coat and gray streaks in her dark hair, but he had a feeling that it wasn’t a good thing that he was meeting her.

“Buck, Tommy, I want to introduce the two of you to Dr. Melody Bergeron. She’s a neonatologist in the NICU here and she’ll be your baby’s doctor after they’re born,” Dr. Emerson introduced them all. Dr. Bergeron smiled and it was like her entire personality changed. Where before she was stern and imposing, now she seemed warm and nurturing.

“Hello Buck, Tommy. I wish that we were meeting under better circumstances. It can be scary and a little overwhelming when my team comes in, especially when the baby is born and you can’t see or hold them right away,” Dr. Bergeron explained. Athena quickly stood up and offered the other woman her chair and Buck was grateful when the neonatologist took it. Having her on his level instead of looming over him was a lot easier for Buck to handle. “I’m here to walk you through what will happen immediately after your baby is born.”

“That sounds great and all, but why are we talking about this at two in the morning? I thought the plan was to wait a couple of days before doing the c-section so that the baby can have a little more time to develop,” Tommy pointed out.

“It was,” Dr. Emerson agreed. “But I’ve been keeping an eye on Buck’s readings. Labor is progressing steadily despite the medication that we’ve given to slow it down. Additionally, we’ve noticed that Buck’s blood pressure rose and the baby’s heart dropped on your last few contractions. It’s not to a point where I’m worried yet, but it is safer for both of you if we get ahead of this,” she said directly to Buck. “Which brings us to now and why I asked Dr. Bergeron to join us.

“My job is to give you all of your options and their individual risks and benefits so that you can make as informed of a decision as possible. Option number one is that we can let you continue to labor as you are now. As we previously discussed, your birth canal isn’t nearly formed enough to let you deliver naturally, so your labor would essentially keep going endlessly. The benefit here is that it will give the baby more time to develop inside of you, which is always the goal of any pregnancy where we know that it’s inevitable that the parent will have a preterm delivery. But the risk is that it will be a significant stress on you and the baby. Before we could do c-sections safely, that kind of labor was a death sentence for parent and baby. If you chose to go this route, we would obviously keep you under close observation, so the risk of such an outcome would be low, but it would still be a matter of time before labor became dangerous.”

“What’s my other option?” Buck asked his doctor point blank. He had already decided that he didn’t want to continue laboring just to buy the baby more time to develop, not if it was going to put them in any kind of danger.

“The other option is that we start prepping you for a c-section now. It’s not an emergent situation, so if you wanted to be awake for it, we could give you an epidural and make that happen. We could also give you general anesthesia if you preferred, but you wouldn’t be able to have anyone come into the OR with you,” Dr. Emerson began before she went on to explain exactly what the surgery would entail. “Some people claim that a c-section is the easy way out of giving birth, but I disagree. You may be awake for the procedure, but it’s still a major abdominal surgery. We’re going to cut through every layer of skin, fat, and muscle before we move your organs out of the way. Then we deliver the baby and still have to sew everything back up. You’ll be recovering from that and undergoing treatment to assist your body with the postpartum healing process. Ultimately, you’ll have a longer and more complicated recovery time than someone who was able to give birth ‘naturally.’” Buck appreciated the air quotes that Dr. Emerson put around the word naturally, even if it may not have been the most professional thing to do. It was the little things she did that made him feel so comfortable with her in such a short amount of time.

“What do you mean that he’ll need assistance with the postpartum process?” Athena asked. Buck had the feeling that if she’d been at any of his earlier appointments then she would’ve gladly interrogated Dr. Emerson.

“In a full term carrier pregnancy, Buck would have developed a birth canal and been able to have a natural birth. Postpartum, he would’ve shed his uterine lining through this canal before it shrank and closed back up until the next time he gets pregnant. His external genitalia would return to normal and there would be very little sign that any of this ever happened,” Dr. Emerson explained to Athena. Buck would be lying if he told someone he wasn’t embarrassed about having his junk described to his stepmother, but at the same time it was so worth it to have her support during such a terrifying moment. “Unfortunately that’s not an option here. We’re going to need to convince Buck’s body that this is just a normal period instead so that he can shed that lining.”

“All of that sounds sufficiently horrifying,” Tommy pointed out. “What’s the benefit to Evan and the baby?”

“No matter what, we simply can’t slow down Buck’s labor until he can give birth naturally. Doing the surgery now, instead of later when it’s potentially critical, means that Buck can be awake and the risks to both of them are significantly lower. Of course, the baby will need the NICU no matter what, which is why I asked Dr. Bergeron to join us.”

“I primarily work day shift, so you’ll mostly see me then, but there are nights like tonight when I’ll come in to talk to new parents or just check in, so don’t panic if you do happen to see me in the middle of the night, although it’s unlikely that you will. You’ll only be here for around three to five weeks provided your child doesn’t need any extreme interventions for some reason.”

“Really, but I’m only thirty-two weeks.”

Dr. Bergeron adjusted in her seat and moved a little closer to Buck. “We’ve come a long way in our understanding of what preemies need at their different stages of development and how we support those needs. At your baby’s current stage, we consider the baby to be a moderate preterm newborn. Essentially, your little one is now almost fully developed and only needs support in a couple of areas. Breathing, eating, and temperature regulation. Depending on how they respond, baby may not even need to be in the NICU for more than a couple of days or a week before we can move them over to the stepdown unit, our CCN or Continuing Care Nursery.”

“What’s the goal before you can completely discharge the baby from the hospital?” Athena asked.

“Breathing with minimal to no assistance, eating on their own, gaining weight at a consistent, steady rate, and maintaining their own temperature to some degree. We’ll most likely start with a CPAP for breathing support, maybe some caffeine to help with any episodes of apnea. I don’t foresee needing to intubate and ventilate based on your current gestation. We’ll need to tube feed the baby to start, small, frequent meals paired with kangaroo care. Your baby can’t really suck quite yet, so we need to work up to that. After that it’s just using a combination of the isolette and skin-to-skin to promote healthy temperature regulation,” Dr. Bergeron explained to all of them. “I don’t want to alarm or overwhelm you, I just want to prepare you so that you hopefully don’t worry too much about any wires or tubes you might see attached to your baby.

“Immediately following the birth, my team and I will examine the baby and if they are stable, we’ll bring them over so that you can both see them for a second before we take them to the NICU.”

“Can Tommy go with them?”

“Evan, no. I’m staying with you,” his partner protested.

“If they’ll let her, then Athena can meet me in recovery. But I need you to go with the baby, Tommy. I don’t want them to be alone and I can’t go with them, so I really really need you to go to the NICU with them,” Buck pleaded.

“I can make sure that Athena can come see you in recovery,” Dr. Emerson assured Buck.

“And Tommy can absolutely come to the NICU with us. He won’t be able to come inside right away, but there’s a window that he’ll be able to watch through while we get baby settled in. Afterwards, we’ll let him come in and take some pictures for you.”

Buck and Tommy shared a nice, long look. Eventually, Buck broke their gaze and turned toward Dr. Emerson. “Okay. Let’s get me prepped for my c-section.”

_______

“You’ve never looked more beautiful.”

Evan just gave him a look like he thought that Tommy was being ridiculous. “I haven’t showered in over twenty-four hours, I have a catheter in, and I’m laying on an operating table?”

“You’re about to bring our child into the world and I’m not supposed to find that beautiful?”

“I’m literally just lying here while Dr. Emerson does all of the work.”

“You’ve done the work to make sure that you made it this far and now you’re letting me cut you open while you’re awake. Give yourself some credit, Buck,” Dr. Emerson chimed in from the other side of a curtain that blocked everything below Evan’s chest from view. Tommy was grateful for that. This whole night had been overwhelming enough and he didn’t think he would be able to handle watching his partner be sliced open on top of it.

“I can give myself the bare minimum credit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I feel beautiful right now.”

“Then just trust that I find you beautiful and handsome as ever right now,” Tommy instructed as he took Evan’s hand in his.

“Okay, Buck. Can you feel this?” Dr Emerson called over the curtain.

“I have no clue what you’re doing over there Doc, so I’m going to say no.”

“Then it’s time to start. I’m going to start with a low, transverse incision and I’m going to take my time with it. Baby should be out in about ten minutes and you should only feel a little tugging sensation.”

“Only ten more minutes until it’s not just the two of us anymore,” Tommy muttered. He tried to place a kiss across Evan’s knuckles, but the effect was lost with the surgical mask currently covering his face.

“I always thought Pops would be here when we became dads, y’know?” Evan shyly admitted. “I imagined he would come by and be one of the first people to meet the baby so I could introduce him to his namesake and watch him pretend he wasn’t crying in private.”

“I know, baby. I wish that Bobby was here too, but I promise you that he would be so proud of you right now. And I bet he still is proud wherever he is now.”

“He’d be so happy that we’re figuring everything out, too. When we first started dating, he told me that you’re ‘good people.’ It was the first relationship where I didn’t feel the need to constantly ask for advice and it gave Pops a good feeling about us.”

“I’m honored that your dad thought that about me.”

“Pops was a really good judge of character. Some people thought that he only saw the good in others, and he did see that, but mostly it was just his Midwest Politeness shining through,” Evan jokes. “I could always tell when he didn’t like someone but was too nice to show it.”

“Now that I can believe.”

“Okay boys. Are you ready to be dads?” one of the surgical nurses asked them. Tommy hadn’t caught any of their names and he would honestly be surprised if he remembered any of them by the end of the day if he had. The last twenty-four hours had simply been too chaotic and the next twenty-four hours were probably going to be even worse.

“No, not really. But is anyone actually ever ready to be a parent?” Evan asked her in return.

“My cousin is pregnant with her sixth and says that she still has no clue what she’s doing half the time. She’s also an utterly fantastic mom, so don’t worry too much,” she advised. Tommy was just thinking about asking if her cousin had any advice when a different noise distracted him. A weak, gasping cry.

“Buck, Tommy, you have a beautiful little girl, but I don’t think she’s at all happy with me right now,” Dr. Emerson announced. She held their new baby up over the curtain for just a second so that the men could get a quick peek and then handed her over to one of the NICU nurses who whisked her away to an isolette just out of their sightline.

“You did it, Evan! She’s here!” Tommy cheered.

“I can’t believe it. She’s real and she’s actually here.”

“She’s definitely real, gentlemen,” Dr. Emerson reassured them. “Do you have a name yet?”

“Barbara Lynn, but we’re going to call her Bobbi, after my father,” Evan told her. “Is she okay?”

“Dr. Bergeron and her team have Bobbi and I’m sure they’ll give you an update soon. My focus is on you right now. I’m going to remove the placenta, make sure that everything is as it should be, and then I’m going to close you back up. We should have you back in recovery in about thirty minutes.”

“And Athena can meet me there, right?” Evan double checked.

“Yes, I’ll make sure that she’s escorted back there to sit with you once you’re settled in.”

The couple spent another few minutes trying to listen to the team working on their daughter, but it was controlled chaos in the operating room and they both only had the bare minimum in terms of medical knowledge. Tommy decided that it was probably for the best that they didn’t know what any of the jargon being thrown around meant. No news was good news and in the same vein, not knowing meant they didn’t know all of the things that could potentially go wrong and require intervention.

“Here she is, Dads. Here’s your little girl, all ready to meet you!” Dr. Bergeron introduced them a minute later. She held the baby so that Evan could easily see her, but made no move to hand her to either of them.

“Hi, Bobbi. We’ve been waiting for you. We’re so excited that we get to meet you!” Evan whispered.

“Happy birthday, sweet pea. I think it might be my favorite day of the year.”

“She’s three pounds, nine ounces or sixteen-hundred-sixteen grams and she’s sixteen and a quarter inches long, so I think that might just be her lucky number. Her one minute apgar score was a six out ten, but her five minute score was a very encouraging nine.”

“What does that mean?” Tommy asked her. Bobbi wasn’t crying anymore, but her breathing still sounded more labored than he was comfortable with, despite it seeming like she was doing well based on Dr. Bergeron’s words.

“An apgar score measures how your baby responds to certain stimuli and their general presentation. Are they nice and pink, moving around, crying, etc. Bobbi’s scores mean that she’s adjusting well to being on the outside so far. We’re going to take her to the NICU now and give her some oxygen and a more thorough exam,” she explained to them. Later, Evan would tell Tommy that more than anything, it was the way Dr. Bergeron talked, measured and precise, like everything was under control, with a certain wisdom behind her words, that made him feel so comfortable entrusting their newborn to her. “Your daughter still has a long way to go, but it’s a very good sign.”

“Can I give her a kiss before you take her?” Evan asked, practically begging their daughter’s doctor.

“Of course you can!” she assured him. Dr. Bergeron carefully brought their incredibly tiny baby close enough that Evan could place a gentle kiss on her forehead.

“I love you so so much, Barbara Lynn. Papa is gonna go with you and the nice doctor and then Daddy will come see you soon. Be good for them.” The newborn gave a mewl in response, trying to turn toward Evan’s voice.

Tommy gave Evan a kiss of his own before he needed to rush so he could follow the NICU team. “I’ve got her, Evan. And I promise you that I’ll take plenty of pictures and notes for you.”

“You’d better, Tommy!”

_______

Tommy was always slightly in awe of how calm the intensive care unit was. The very purpose of it was to provide extraordinary care to people with near catastrophic injuries or extreme illness. Some primal part of Tommy therefore always expected constant chaos whenever he stepped onto the unit for any reason, because that’s what it was like in the field for those types of patients.

Following the baby that he only found out about three weeks ago into the NICU, he experienced the same feeling of stepping into a bizarro world. Here is a hospital unit filled with babies who were either nowhere near ready to be out in the world or who were so sick that they needed constant care to keep them away from death’s doorstep. They all needed intensive care on a whole new level, but there was no rush. Even as Tommy stood by the cleaning station that preceded the unit, changing his trauma gown for a fresh one and scrubbing his hands again, he watched as the nurses and Dr. Bergeron settled Bobbi into an empty bay slowly and with purpose. No movement was wasted.

“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast,” Tommy heard Evan say in his mind. It was something that the younger man had said often when they were together. He’d also heard it from some of the special forces guys that he’d known over the years. Once he really thought about it, Tommy probably shouldn’t have been so surprised to find out that Evan had trained to become a Navy SEAL.

Watching all of the NICU personnel carry out their duties, responding to alarms and nervous parents the entire time, Tommy realized how true that saying really was. Moving slowly helped ensure that the staff got everything right the first time. He could only assume that it was just like in firefighting, where working slowly and methodically was hammered home at the academy so that you got everything right. Ultimately, that was always quicker than rushing and needing to do something all over again because you did it wrong the first time. And just like with firefighting, such tiny, underdeveloped babies meant there wouldn’t be many second chances.

His hands freshly scrubbed and a new gown and mask in place, Tommy was finally given the all clear to enter the NICU proper. He was met by a nurse about his height, with dark, slicked back hair. Tommy was surprised by the tattoos that were visible on his arms, nowhere near being covered by the short sleeves on his olive green scrubs. Just visible around the edges of his own mask was a hint of scruff around his jaw. This was not the kind of nurse someone might expect to see on a pediatric ward. Despite all of that, he exuded an aura of calm and comfort that immediately put Tommy at ease and made the nurse seem like a perfect fit to deal with all of the anxious parents.

“Baby Girl Buckley’s dad?” the nurse checked.

“Kinard, actually. Evan and I decided that she would take my name.”

“We’ll have you guys fill out her birth certificate and paperwork as soon as possible so that our systems can reflect that. My name is Gray. I’m gonna be one of your daughter’s nurses while she’s in the NICU and then later when she’s in the CCN,” he introduced himself.

“Tommy Kinard. Is Bobbi okay?”

“She’s a little fighter. We’ve started an IV line to give her some medications to help encourage her lung development along and taken some blood to run a few tests. We’re going to be fairly thorough in our exams because on top of being a preemie, your daughter was also the result of a cryptic pregnancy. All of these tests don’t mean that anything is wrong, but your partner didn’t receive much prenatal care, so we just want to make sure that everything is developmentally on track for Bobbi’s gestation.”

“We didn’t even know that Evan was a carrier before this. His older brother tested negative and due to a couple of other factors, Evan’s parents just assumed that he would be negative too and never even bothered to have him tested. Somehow they got it on his medical file too so Evan had no reason to question it.”

“Well that was certainly a choice,” Gray stated diplomatically. “We’re going to do everything in our power to take care of your daughter so that she can go home with you guys as soon as possible.

“We’ve also been monitoring her breathing oxygen levels and Dr. Bergeron is very confident that she doesn’t need to be intubated, but we’re going to put her on something called a CPAP. It provides a constant flow of oxygen with positive pressure and just helps keep her lungs inflated while they finish developing so that she can breathe on her own.”

“How long will that last?” Tommy asked as they finally came to a stop by Bobbi’s incubator.

“We want her to outgrow any episodes of apnea of prematurity, which is essentially where someone just stops breathing for a second. It actually is common in adults when sleeping and many use a larger version of this same machine at home to help with that. Once Bobbi has outgrown those episodes, then she’ll no longer need any kind of support. Over the next two to three weeks, we’ll step her down to a high flow nasal cannula, then a low flow one. Once she can successfully suck, swallow, and breathe without forgetting the last part, we’ll stop all support. But that takes time until we can try it, because she doesn’t have much of a sucking reflex right now, which is why we’re also about to insert a feeding tube.”

“Will you feed her formula?”

“Ideally we’d like to feed her breast milk, at least to start. If your partner is willing to try pumping, then we’ll give her his until she can latch onto a bottle or the source if Mr. Buckley is okay and comfortable with that. If he isn’t, or his supply doesn’t come in for some reason, then we’ll use donated milk, which is what we’ll give her for her first few feedings anyway with your consent,” Gray explained. “If you guys don’t want to go with either of those options, for any reason, it’s totally valid. In that case, then we would give her a formula that’s specially designed for preemies. But really, what she gets and how she gets it isn’t what’s ultimately important. That’s she’s being fed and gaining weight is what matters.”

“For the first couple of feedings I think Evan will be okay with the donor milk, but he’s going to want all of his options and to know everything you’ve already told me so he can do some research and make a decision,” Tommy responded instead of trying to make a decision himself.

“And we’ll make sure that we explain all of this to him, but we don’t want to overwhelm either of you. The NICU is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re here for a few weeks, so we’ll have time to teach you and get you ready to take your little one home.”

Chapter Eleven

“Okay, what do you boys think of this?” Athena asked them after she finished typing something up on her phone. While Buck had been in recovery following his c-section, he’d realized that with Bobbi now actually here, he could no longer keep her a secret. Making a birth announcement and telling people was just one more thing he needed to add to his to-do list and he was already starting to feel overwhelmed by it all. Sensing that, his stepmother had offered to take the task off of his plate. Now, almost thirteen hours later, here they were.

“I’m excited to help Buck and Tommy announce the birth of their daughter, Barbara ‘Bobbi’ Lynn Kinard. Born at three-oh-four AM, she’s sixteen and a quarter inches long and weighs three pounds, nine ounces. She’s a little early, but strong and healthy. They only found out about Buck’s pregnancy a few weeks ago and are still adjusting. For now, Buck and Tommy are asking that any potential visitors hold off until tomorrow afternoon and please call or text before coming by the hospital. Congratulations, Buck and Tommy. You’re both going to be amazing dads,” Athena read from her phone. “And then I included the photo I took of you two when Buck was holding Bobbi for the first time earlier.”

“I think that sounds really good,” Tommy told her after getting a nod from Buck. “It covers all of our bases and makes our expectations clear.”

“And thank you so much for offering to text everyone for us. With how the One-Eighteen and company have been treating Tommy and how they’ve all been basically ignoring me, I don’t trust that if we sent that text that anyone would pay attention to it. They’d also probably then blame us for not telling any of them about Bobbi,” Buck muttered. He fiddled a little with the breast pump that a lactation consultant had given him that morning. Buck was meant to be using it to try and induce his milk supply, but the process was uncomfortable and he didn’t want to do it while having this conversation.

“I’d like to see any of them try to ignore me,” Athena huffed. “It is not your job to fix whatever is going on with your team or your sister. They are grown adults who can take care of themselves. If they get worse, then you let me know and I’ll deal with them.”

“Right before he sent me to get you, Bobby told me that I was going to be okay and that ‘they’ would need me. At the time I thought he meant the One-Eighteen. But now a part of me feels like he just knew about Bobbi somehow and he was talking about her and Tommy.”

“Who knows, sweetheart. But like I said, they are grown adults and managing them is not your job.”

“Thank you, we really appreciate it.”

“Before I leave for the day, I wanted to talk to you both about something.”

“Are you and the kids okay?” Tommy asked her. Athena had been with them for the better part of a day now, and he was just realizing basically all of their conversations had revolved around Buck and Bobbi.

“We’re doing as okay as we can be, considering the circumstances. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. The dream house is almost ready to live in, but I can’t do it. Not without Bobby. Up until last night I was set on selling the house, but now I have a different idea in mind.

“Having children is far from cheap and now you have unexpected medical costs, need time off work, and no time to save and prepare. So I want you two to have the house. You can move in and sell or rent Tommy’s place or you can sell or rent the dream house. Either way, the house is yours to do whatever you want with it.”

“Athena, that’s your home. We couldn’t possibly accept it,” Buck argued.

“Bobby and I never got to live in that house together. Maybe if we had I would feel different, be able to see all of my memories of him there. But instead all I see when I walk inside to inspect the construction is all of the hope and dreams we had for that house. Living in it without my husband is a no go. But there is still one dream that I might be able to make a reality, even if Bobby won’t be here to see it. Watching our grandchildren play in the yard. And if you two don’t want to live there, then at least I can know that it will help secure my granddaughter’s future,” Athena explained.

“That’s a brand new build in a great location, Athena,” Tommy reminded her. “Your retirement would be set by the sale of that house. No to mention all of the money that you already spent to build it.”

“Our homeowners insurance covered almost all of the build. As for my retirement, I’m still working, I have no plans to stop any time soon, and I still have my pension. On top of that, Bobby had a robust life insurance policy and I received his pension and survivors benefits. I don’t need money. So please, take the house,” she insisted.

“We aren’t going to be able to change your mind, are we?”

“Nope, so just accept it and worry about where you want to live and which house you want to sell or if you’re going to rent it out somehow.”

“Thank you, Athena. We really appreciate the gift and everything else that you’ve done for us.”

“Your father didn’t have time to change his will after the adoption, but he would have wanted to make sure that you and the family that you’re building were all taken care of. And I know that his granddaughter would have been Bobby’s pride and joy.”

“Oh, Pops would have spoiled her rotten,” Buck proclaimed.

“And he would have denied that that’s what he was doing at every turn.

“Now, I’m going to send this text and then-”

Knock knock

“Did you already send it?” Tommy asked her.

“No, and if I had, it still hasn’t been long enough for anyone to receive it and then come here.”

“Com in!” Buck called, ignoring Tommy and Athena’s attempts to figure out who could be trying to visit him. It turned out to be the absolute last person that Buck would have expected. “Kameron.”

“Hey, Buck. I was, um, I was wondering if we could talk.”

Buck shared a look with his partner and stepmother. Athena clearly wanted to stay and be a witness or backup for Buck in whatever conversation was about to take place, but could clearly read his face enough to know that he didn’t need that right now. Ultimately, Athena calmly got up, said her goodbyes to Buck and Tommy, told them she was going to use her NICU bracelet to check on her granddaughter on her way home, and left. But not without aiming her intimidating gaze on Kameron, all but glaring at her.

“Do you want me to give you two some privacy?” Tommy whispered.

“No. You’re a part of this now and it affects you, too. I’d prefer it if you stayed,” Buck whispered back. “Could you hand me the cover though? I really can’t put off pumping any longer and I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be a short conversation.”

“Of course, Evan. Just let me know if you change your mind.”

“I won’t but thank you, Tommy. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Kameron was kind enough to wait outside while Buck got himself set up with the pump. Just said she remembered those days well and that it was really no problem.

“No Connor?” Buck checked once she was sitting in Athena’s former seat next to his bed.

“No. I told him that it was for the best if he stayed home with Theo. I’m kind of absolutely furious with him right now and I need some space. And if I don’t want to see him, then I can’t even begin to imagine how you’re feeling.”

“Honestly, Kam? I’m just so confused about how we even got here. I mean, I guess I wouldn’t have called us friends, but I still don’t know how we ended up in court this morning.”

Kameron took a moment to gather her thoughts before replying. “After Theo was born, I just wanted to fix my relationship with Connor and have that picture perfect family that I’d always dreamed of, you know? I was also seriously doubting my ability to make the right decisions. So when Connor told me that he thought it was in everyone’s best interest if we cut contact with you, I just agreed with him to try and keep the peace. He felt that enough lines had already been crossed and that we needed to reinforce our boundaries. Connor also knew that I was genuinely starting to consider you a friend, so he told me that he would handle telling you and that it was only for a few years so that no one would get confused about your role in Theo’s life. Theo was in the CCN and I was exhausted, so I didn’t question it and just trusted that my husband would take care of everything so I could take care of myself and Theo.”

“Connor didn’t tell me anything, Kameron,” Buck corrected her. “Before this morning, the last time that I saw or heard from either of you was at the hospital when Theo was born. I literally still had your blood on my clothes.”

“Yeah, Connor came clean about everything after the hearing this morning. He admitted that he just ghosted you and that when you tried to reach out a couple of weeks ago, he didn’t even bother to listen to your voicemail or read your texts. Before today, what he told me was that you’d been hounding him for months about seeing Theo, that you’d called yourself his real father. I panicked when Connor said that and suggested that we should get a restraining order. I guess Connor was hoping that I would say that because he just agreed with me and told me that he already had a lawyer he was friends with working on it.”

“No offense, but your husband sounds extremely insecure,” Tommy told her.

“Connor’s just had a really hard time with all of this. Learning that he couldn’t have children was a shock. Then accepting that ultimately the only way I would be able to get pregnant would be by another man? He felt emasculated,” Kameron defended her husband. “But he knew how much I wanted a baby, so he dealt with it.”

“Except that he obviously didn’t deal with it, Kameron. The way he shut down before Theo was born, ghosting me when it was you two who crossed lines and over involved me,” Buck argued with her, listing off all of the faults with her version of events. “If not being the one to get you pregnant was such a big issue for Connor, then he should have actually talked to you about it, and probably talked to a therapist about it too.

“You guys had options other than sperm donation if it was truly that big a deal for him. And you definitely shouldn’t have gone the known donor route. You could have fostered or adopted if all you wanted was to be parents. If being pregnant was what was truly important to you, then you guys could’ve done IVF and embryo adoption. There were so many options other than ambushing a former acquaintance of Connor’s about being your sperm donor.”

“I know, but he’s such a good father to Theo. If you saw them together then you would know that.”

“It’s not my fault that I’ve never seen the two of them interact. And maybe Connor’s a good dad to Theo now, but what happens when he grows up? Will Connor continue to be a good dad, or will he notice all of the ways Theo doesn’t look like him and take it out on Theo emotionally? I mean, you guys asked me and I couldn’t look more different from Connor. Or what about if Theo acts differently than Connor, has different likes and dislikes, different dreams that make Connor wonder, ‘where did he get this from? This isn’t me.’” Buck gently asks her. The last thing Buck wants to do is upset Kameron and cause a fight, but it was a serious concern with Connor’s recent behavior and the issues that cropped up before Theo was born and someone had to say it.

“I don’t think Connor is worried about that at all. He knows that how he raises Theo is what’s really important,” Kameron forcefully asserted.

“Does he? Because when Connor came to my apartment, uninvited, to argue your case on why I should donate my sperm to you two, despite me asking for time to think, he told me that the reason you guys wanted me and not an anonymous donor was because I’m kind and that’s what you wanted for your child. That doesn’t sound like someone who put a lot of weight in the nurture side of the debate.”

“I trust that Connor loves Theo and would never treat him as anything less than his son. That’s not why I came to see you.”

“Then why did you come, Kameron? I feel like we said everything we needed to say in court today.” Buck had been extremely lucky that Ms. Hawthorne had been able to arrange for him to attend his hearing virtually at the last minute. He’d mostly just sat there and let the lawyer argue his case while he tried to stay awake. Once the judge had heard and seen all of the evidence, he’d been less than impressed by all of them. In the end, he’d ruled in Buck’s favor, but warned him that next time he should just let all contact go through his lawyer.

“You cut the call before I could apologize for all of this. I shouldn’t have just trusted Connor and taken him at his word. I should have contacted you myself. I also wanted to congratulate you on your new baby and offer my support as a former NICU parent,” Kameron admitted. Something about the way that she wouldn’t make eye contact with him while she said that made Buck think that it wasn’t the whole truth.

“Thank you, but I don’t think we’ll need that. The staff here is great and we trust our friends and family to support us outside of the hospital. There’s also a support group that our neonatologist suggested to us,” Tommy stated diplomatically, trying to gently let the woman down.

“Kameron, I appreciate the thought, really, I do. But we aren’t friends. And when it comes down to it, we don’t actually know each other that well.”

“I, uh, was also thinking that we could join forces and go to the clinic together. If we present a united front, then they have to give us answers about the mix up.” There it was. So that’s the real reason Kameron decided to come talk to him. There was an almost begging tone to Kameron’s voice and the part of Buck that wanted to help others, the whole reason he said yes to her and Connor in the first place, wanted to give in to her request. He wanted to try and fix this for Kameron. But the last couple of years had made it clear that she and Connor wouldn’t do the same for him and Buck was learning to stop putting his own needs last for those people.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Kam,” Buck tried to politely reject her idea. “We’re formally suing the clinic for medical malpractice. This isn’t a simple mix up, they could have done some real damage here by either not testing my sample or testing the wrong one. Tommy and I want a full investigation along with a monetary settlement because sometimes money’s the only thing that companies of any sort care about. Hopefully the threat of losing it will be a good motivator for them to change and do better in the future.”

“If we want the same things, then we should do this together,” Kameron pressed. “There’s strength in numbers.”

“Hypothetically, if we do this together, then we’d need to agree to any settlements together. If the clinic were to offer a significant amount of money in exchange for no investigation into how it was missed that I couldn’t sire your child, would you and Connor hold firm about having the investigation completed?”

“Of course,” she hurried to answer Buck’s question.

“Ok, but what if the investigation shows that there was more negligence than simply not testing my sample? What if they did test my sample and just chose to hide the real results from us and give you a random donor? What if they did genuinely mix the samples up and they can’t tell you anything about the real donor because they aren’t sure who it is?” Buck pressed her.

“Then Connor and I would deal with it,” Kameron swore.

Buck didn’t want to keep pressuring Kameron to try and get what he thought would be her real answer when it really came down to it, but he didn’t think that she had fully thought this situation through. When Buck and Tommy had first met with Mr. Grady, the lawyer had walked them through all of the possible outcomes and explanations for what had happened. He’d also warned the couple that it would be hard and unethical to hide the results from the Rileys. And there was a good chance that they wouldn’t like the results.

“What if Theo’s real biological father is a known donor like me?”

“What do you mean? Like you how?”

“When I went in to make my donation, I had to sign all kinds of releases and contracts. One of those was a contract that was clearly a form contract that they had used before and simply had our names filled in. It stated that I was only giving the clinic permission to give my sperm to you and Connor and that it was only under those circumstances that I was signing away my parental rights. I didn’t consent to anyone else receiving my sperm. What if the actual donor signed the same contract and isn’t comfortable with his biological son being raised by complete strangers? What if he wants shared custody or visitation? Would you still be okay with a full investigation if that was the result?” Buck continued to nearly interrogate Kameron.

“That won’t happen. And even if he was a known donor, he signed his parental rights away like you did.”

“I signed mine over under specific conditions that it was only to you and Connor,” Buck reiterated. “The other donor could have done the same for another couple. If those conditions aren’t met, if it wasn’t that couple that received his sperm, then a court may not uphold the contract. Fertility law is a legal gray zone in a lot of ways, Kam.”

“It won’t happen,” she continued to insist. Buck could tell he was getting nowhere with her and decided not to voice the other potential outcome that Mr. Grady had been worried about the Rileys’ role in the lawsuit. That the clinic did use Buck’s untested sample and that Kameron got pregnant because she was having an affair. Now was not the time or place to inadvertently accuse Kameron of cheating on her husband.

_______

Unfortunately for Buck and Tommy, Kameron Riley was only the first uninvited visitor they received during Buck’s hospital stay. After a night of doctors, nurses, and Buck’s alarm to pump interrupting their sleep, the two men were exhausted. They were definitely not in the mood to deal with Hen showing up with no warning as soon as visiting hours started.

“Hey guys!” She greeted them cheerfully. “I have some errands that I need to run today so I wanted to pop in and see you first so I could make sure I had a chance to actually do it.”

“You could’ve just come tomorrow if you didn’t have time this afternoon,” Buck told her. He didn’t want to be rude and flat out tell Hen that he really wasn’t up for visitors at the moment. Hopefully, she would get the message that Buck was trying to imply about his boundaries for visitors. But just in case she didn’t, he added, “Or you could have just called me.”

“I wanted to actually see you and make sure that you weren’t lying about how you’re doing. You could be missing a limb and still try to tell us that you’re fine.”

“Um, rude. And I just had a c-section. It hurts like a bitch, I’m pumping so I can’t have the strong pain meds, I’m hormonal, and my baby is in the NICU. But it’s not something that I can’t handle and really, I’m okay, Hen,” Buck insisted.

“Mmhmm. And what’s Maddie say?” Hen countered, clearly not believing him.

“I don’t know, Hen, considering I haven’t seen or talked to my sister since the funeral. And even if I had, I don’t see how her opinion about how I’m doing matters more than mine.”

“Phones work both ways, Buck. You can call her, too. But I didn’t come here to fight with you about your sister, Buck,” she sighed. “I came here to see how you’re doing.”

“Look, Hen. I appreciate the visit, I do. But I’ve had an insane few days and a really long night. All I want is to go see my daughter. So if you just came by to check on me, then thank you, I’m doing okay. I appreciate you thinking about me.”

“Karen and I may not have been in your exact position before, but we still know what it’s like to have no time to prepare for a new child. If you guys need any help with setting up the nursery or picking up any online orders, we’re here to help,” Hen offered. “I think we might even still have some of Jee’s old stuff that Maddie and Chim gave us before we ended up fostering Mara.”

“Thank you, Hen. We really appreciate the help. Bobbi’s going to be in the NICU and CCN for about a month, but between trying to move in together, recovering from my surgery, and just being there with her, that’s not a lot of time,” Buck sighed.

“Barbara Lynn is a beautiful name,” she told them. “A little old-fashioned, but in a good way. Classic instead of outdated. Were you two thinking about Barbara Streisand when you named her?”

“Well, we knew that we wanted her nickname to be Bobbi and Roberta sounded even more old-fashioned than Barbara,” Tommy explained. “Like you said, outdated instead of classic.”

“And the only thing I actually know about Barbara Streisand is that she’s an actress. I couldn’t actually name a movie with her in it off the top of my head. So Bobbi definitely isn’t named after her. I just happened to know someone named Barbara during my nomad days who’s best friend called her Bobbi.”

“So you guys are really set on calling her Bobbi?” Hen asked. “That’s an interesting name for a little girl.”

“What are you getting at here, Hen?” Buck nearly growled. He didn’t know why people felt the need to beat around the bush and play games when they knew that he preferred to just hear whatever they had to say straight up. And he really wasn’t in the mood for Hen to hem and haw when he just had a fairly traumatic birth. He was fucking tired of it.

“Look, I shouldn’t say anything because they want it to be a surprise for everyone, especially Athena, but Maddie and Chim want to name their son after Bobby.”

“Okay? And? If they want to name their son after him, then that’s their right. I don’t have a monopoly on the name. I mean, I hope that they have some back up nicknames like we do in case calling her Bobbi is too much, but they can name my nephew whatever they want.”

“I think they’re just a little hurt that you didn’t confide your pregnancy in them and then stole the name that they wanted to use,” Hen told him in that tone she used when she thought that Buck was being difficult or just too dumb to understand something ‘obvious.’

“We only found out a couple of weeks ago and need to get our own heads around me being a carrier and pregnant. It’s not like we told everyone except for my sister and her husband. No one knew until I went into labor and even then it was just Athena,” Buck pointed out.

“Maddie just isn’t used to you not confiding in her.”

“I decided to stop doing that recently when I specifically asked her not to tell Chimney something and she went and did it anyway. Their no secrets thing is so fucking toxic and that’s before they start telling each other secrets that aren’t theirs to gossip about with each other. Also, it’s really fucking rich that Maddie is pissed I kept her out of the loop for a couple of weeks when she’s been cutting me out of the picture for months while you all build a little family together.

“As for stealing the name that they wanted to use? What the actual fuck? A, I didn’t know that they were considering the name Robert or Bobby at all because they don’t fucking confide that shit in me and B, just like I don’t have a monopoly on the name Bobby, neither do they. Everyone is free to use whatever name they want, even if it’s the same name or nickname.

“Well, I’m sorry you feel like we’re trying to cut you out of the picture, but we aren’t. You are Maddie’s little brother and you always will be. But give everyone some slack here, Buck. We’re all grieving Bobby as our captain and friend, but Chimney is carrying a special kind of grief around. Bobby gave his life so that Chimney could get that cure and go home to his family and now Chim has to live with that every day. He and Maddie want to honor that sacrifice and their friendship with him by naming their son after him,” Hen argued.

“Hen, they can still name their son Bobby, we have no issue with that,” Tommy stressed, paraphrasing what Buck had already said.

“Don’t you think it will be a little confusing to have two kids so close in age, hell two cousins so close in age, with the same name?” Hen really wanted them to change their daughter’s name, apparently.

“If Maddie and Chimney are so confused about their son being confused with my daughter, then they can name him Nash or Wade and they would still be naming him after Bobby,” Buck suggested. His chest was starting to hurt and he just wanted to go up to the NICU so that he could pump while watching Bobbi. But he needed this conversation to be over first so that Hen would leave on her own. Hopefully.

“They want to use Nash as his middle name. Robert Nash Han.”

“I don’t know what you want from me here, Hen!” Buck finally snapped at Hen.

“Do not take that tone with me, Buck,” she warned, treating him like he was a little kid, the same way that Maddie often did. Immediately after, her tone changed to pleading, trying to get her way. “Would you please just consider calling Barbara something else? Bobby died for Chimney. They were friends for years and we knew him for years before you even came into the picture. Let him have this.”

“And Bobby was my dad! You all liked to joke about how Bobby was like my father, but once it actually got serious, you either ignored it or ‘forgot.’ Just like you’re doing right now. You actually know that Bobby was in the process of legally adopting me. Hell, you know that he did, that we signed the papers the same day that he died. But now that it’s inconvenient and interfering with what your bestie wants, you forgot or ignored that.”

Apparently Tommy could tell that Buck couldn’t handle the conversation anymore and decided to step in before Buck did any more damage to his friendship with Hen. “Thanks for coming by, Hen. But I think it’s best if you head out now. This conversation stopped being productive a while ago and Evan and I haven’t gotten much sleep in the past few days. We just want to go check on Bobbi now and take it as easy as we can for the rest of the day,” the pilot politely dismissed her.

“I didn’t mean to stress either of you out, but please just consider what I said. And don’t be afraid to call Karen and I if you need help with anything.” Hen gave Buck one more look, somehow managing to mix disappointment, pleading, and anger into one facial expression, before she finally left them alone.

Not even ten minutes later, as Tommy was helping Buck back to his bed after a quick trip to the bathroom (nothing about it was actually quick, and Buck was sure he was experiencing a new level of hell now that the hormone treatments were kicking in), another visitor showed up. This time, it was Eddie and he brought Chris and Pepa along with him.

“Buck!” Chris cheered.

“Hey, Chris! What are you doing back in LA?” Buck was genuinely surprised to see the teenager. The last that Buck knew, Eddie had no intention of Chris leaving El Paso when he was heading back in just a few days. Chris gave Buck a hug and the man was grateful when Tommy helped him back onto the bed soon after. Hopefully the teen hadn’t noticed Buck flinching when he hit the stitches in his stomach.

“Dad said he thought you needed to be cheered up.”

“I heard some guy was being a dick to you,” Eddie added, with no hint of apology in his words or tone.

“You did, huh?” Tommy quietly snarked, his voice only audible to Buck.

“We were going to make dinner for you when Eddito got the text message from Sergeant Grant. Congratulations, Evanito,” Pepa told him. “How is your daughter?”

“So far Bobbi is doing okay. She needs a little help breathing and for now she’s being tube fed because she isn’t quite ready to eat on her own,” Buck explained. “Our plan is to spend the day with her after my doctor checks on me.”

“So you’re actually going to call her Bobbi? Don’t you think that’s a little inappropriate?” Eddie questioned.

“If I want to name my daughter after my father, then I will. And if it’s too much for people to use the nickname that we want, then they can call her Little B or Barbara. But Tommy and I are going to keep calling her Bobbi. And if she doesn’t like it when she’s older, then we’ll stop. But only if Bobbi asks us to.”

“Look, I know that we all used to joke about it, but Bobby Nash wasn’t actually your dad. It’s not fair to your actual father or Bobby’s real kids for you to say otherwise. And did you ever think that maybe May or Harry will want to name their kids after their stepfather. Or maybe Chimney wants to name his son after his friend who sacrificed his life so that Chim could be there for his family?”

“Eddie, if I were you, I would stop talking about things that I don’t understand,” Tommy cooly advised the other firefighter.

“This has nothing to do with you Kinard. Stay out of it!” Eddie hissed.

“Ummm, you’re talking about my daughter’s name. It has everything to do with me.”

“Tommy, please?” Buck simply asked his partner, hoping that his tone and expression conveyed that while he appreciated Tommy standing up for both of them, this wasn’t the time or place for the big fight that he seemed to be itching for. Apparently it worked because Tommy immediately backed down.

“Can we go see Bobbi now?” Christopher piped up, trying to break the tension in the room. “I want to meet her.”

“I’m sorry, Superman. But they don’t let kids under sixteen in the NICU unless it’s a special circumstance, and even then it’s only immediate family members like siblings,” Buck tried to explain. “Once we bring Bobbi home we’ll try to arrange something.”

“But I want to meet her now!” Chris demanded.

“I’m sorry, Christopher, but it’s just not possible.”

“Come on, Buck. We’re going back to El Paso tomorrow and probably won’t be back for months. I’d say that’s a special enough circumstance,” Eddie countered. Buck shouldn’t have been surprised that Eddie wasn’t backing him up on this. Lately, anything Chris wanted Eddie gave to him, like it proves that he loves his son and is a good father. Buck foresaw a very spoiled teenager soon if Eddie didn’t stop that, but it wasn’t his place to say so, not with where his relationship with the Diazes currently stood. “And you’re Christopher’s guardian if anything ever happens to me. That’s close enough to a sibling.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t make the rules for the NICU. You guys going back to Texas is not the kind of special circumstance that qualifies as an exception to the no minors rule. And even if it was, I’m not currently Christopher’s guardian, so I can’t claim that they have a relationship equivalent to siblings,” Buck calmly explained.

“Come on Buck, please?”

“Yeah, Buck. Please?” Eddie mimicked his son.

“Evan already explained that these are the NICU’s rules and we didn’t make them,” Tommy firmly told the Diaz boys, glaring at Eddie the entire time. “The rules are there to protect the very vulnerable babies from potentially getting sick, because kids are tiny and not-so-tiny germ spreading machines.”

“Chris isn’t sick. We’re very careful to keep him healthy.”

“Maybe he isn’t having any symptoms right now, but he could still be carrying some virus. It’s not a risk that Evan and I are going to take with Bobbi or any of the other babies.”

“I brought Chris to see you when you were in a coma, Buck. Kids weren’t allowed in the ICU then, either. Why can’t you find some way to let him see your kid?” Eddie turned to Buck, completely ignoring Tommy now.

“Because I’m trying to follow the advice of the medical professionals who are currently keeping my daughter alive. Chris doesn’t meet the criteria to be a visitor, which I’m extremely thankful for, and that’s that.”

“And what criteria is that, huh? What could make you sooooo goddamn happy about my son not meeting your kid?” Eddie demanded. Buck was surprised that he was behaving like this in front of his aunt, but Pepa didn’t seem overly pleased with Buck’s words either.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have phrased it like that. Maybe we should drop the topic right now. I want to go check on Bobbi and what you’re asking about isn’t the most appropriate thing to talk about in front of Chris,” Buck tried to redirect everyone.

“I’m not a baby! I can hear about grown up stuff!” Chris snapped.

“Go on and answer my question, Buck. You know, since you said something so insensitive about my son in front of him, I’d say you owe him that.”

It was Tommy who decided to explain what Buck had meant, clearly fed up with Eddie’s attitude. “Evan means that he’s glad that Bobbi and Chris aren’t dying. That’s the main reason they make an exception and let siblings under sixteen visit. Because either the baby is going to die or the older sibling will die before they can be released from the NICU and it’s the only chance the siblings would ever have to meet. So please forgive us that we’re happy our child is expected to live, even if it means that your child can’t meet her for a few months.”

Pepa gave Tommy an appraising look following his outburst. Like she’d been trying to figure something out and the pilot just gave her another piece of the puzzle and even more questions. “You have been very cold and unwelcoming to my nephew. I would like to know why.”

“I don’t think that’s something that Chris needs to hear. Not because he’s too young,” Tommy quickly added when he saw the teenager getting worked up again. “I just don’t think anyone should be shit talking a parent in front of their minor child.”

“If you have something to say then you can say it in front of everyone!” Eddie snapped. “Otherwise just shut up and mind your own damn business!”

“Fine. You told your family that someone was being a dick to Evan? The part that Eddie left out,” Tommy said directly to Pepa, “was that the person being a dick to Evan was Eddie. And if he had just left Evan alone, we might not be here.”

Chapter Twelve

“Excuse me?! How is any of this my fault?!”

“I’ll grant you that a lot happened in the last few days that contributed to Evan’s stress, but you were the straw that broke the camel’s back. You added so much to Evan’s stress levels that he went into premature labor,” Tommy explained slowly, like he was speaking to a particularly stubborn rescue.

“I don’t know what Buck told you about our fight-”

“Evan didn’t need to tell me much, considering I was on the phone with him and I heard everything. I know about the ‘tragedy in ninety-seven acts.’ I know about how you accused Evan of making everything about himself. I also know about how you told Evan that we didn’t do enough to save Bobby and that if you were here then it would’ve made a difference.”

“I was grieving! We all were and Buck only cared about his own grief!” Eddie snarled, trying to defend himself only for Pepa to whack him on the arm.

“Grief is not an excuse to say hurtful things to your friends!” his aunt chastised him.

“And it definitely isn’t a good reason to get physical with someone either. You’re lucky that I wasn’t there in person or you’d have to postpone starting your new job.”

“You’re acting like I hit Buck. I barely even touched him.”

“You shoved me into the counter and then pinned me there. You got in my face and when you pointed at me, I thought you were going to punch me,” Buck disputed, tearing apart Eddie’s viewpoint of their fight. “That’s not ‘barely touched’ me.”

“You seriously think I would’ve punched you?” Eddie groaned, rolling his eyes like he thought Buck was being childish to think so.

“You’ve told me in the past that you’ve wanted to and heavily implied that I deserved it when Chimney punched me in the face. So why shouldn’t I have been concerned about you doing so the other night?”

“Here we go again. What is this, a rehashing of act eighty-something?”

“Edmundo, quiet!” Pepa ordered him. “I am very sorry about all of this, Evanito. If I had known what happened or how my nephews were going to behave, I wouldn’t have agreed to all of us coming today.”

“I appreciate that Pepa, but I’d like you to leave now. Tommy and I were very clear about not wanting visitors until this afternoon and that we wanted them to text us first. I was willing to see you all now because I know that Athena wouldn’t have told you or Christopher about my boundaries for visitors, but now I’m tired and I would just like to go see my baby,”

“Of course, Evanito. I need to have a few words with my nephews anyway, and it’s best that it happens in private.

“Congratulations again, Buck and Tommy. Please let me know when you’re discharged. I’d like to bring some food for you two so you don’t have to worry about cooking on top of all of this.”

“Thank you, Pepa. We’d really appreciate that.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Before you go though, I’d like to clear some things up with Eddie,” Tommy said.

“Of course. Christopher and I will give you some privacy. Let’s go, Christopher.”

It took a minute before Pepa could get Chris to leave, Eddie being no help in the process. When the three men were finally alone, Tommy moved so that he was standing directly in front of the younger man and he would be forced to look directly at him.

“First off, Evan is one of the kindest, most selfless people I’ve ever met. Expressing his emotions doesn’t make him selfish, it makes him human. Standing up for himself isn’t selfish, it’s just taking care of his mental health. Evan is allowed boundaries, just like anyone else.

“Secondly, you chose to move to Texas. You chose to let your son live with your parents indefinitely in another state. They weren’t given court ordered custody. So I’m sorry that Chris may not get to meet Bobbi for a few months because of where he lives. But it’s not mine or Evan’s fault that his life isn’t in LA anymore.

“Just like it’s not our fault that Captain Nash died in the line of duty. We did all that could possibly be done. No one knew that Bobby was infected too and even if we did, there was only a single dose of the anti-viral. It’s honestly a complete miracle that we managed to save anyone. If you had been there, unless you were on the outside, you would have just been another person that we needed to try and save. And if you were on the outside, there’s nothing that you could’ve done to change that there was only one dose,” Tommy lectured. It was brutal, the way that Tomy just laid out all the things that Eddie had made Buck feel bad about and then turn them around to make it clear that none of it was Buck’s fault.

“You need help, Eddie. More help than Frank can give you or that I will. I’m done being your emotional punching bag. Please, when you go back to El Paso, find a new therapist. Because the last time that I saw you this angry for this long, you joined a fight club and almost killed someone. You called it grieving back then, too.”

Buck watched the man who he once considered to be his best friend get angrier and angrier the longer he and Tommy talked,until finally Eddie boiled over. “So much for having my back I guess!”

“Believe it or not, this is me having your back.”

_______

“So, I heard from Hen that she came to see you both this morning,” Athena commented over the lunch she’d brought by on her break. It had been a fight to get Buck to leave Bobbi, but eventually they got him to step aside when Gray came by and nearly shoved Buck into a family room outside the NICU where they were allowed to eat. It helped when he reminded Buck that he could also pull up the Angel Eye camera on his phone so that he could still keep an eye on the newborn while he ate.

“She and Eddie both did. Unannounced and uninvited. They voiced their disagreement with our nickname for Bobbi and then Eddie tried to make me sneak Christopher into the NICU because Chris wanted to see Bobbi and is going back to El Paso tomorrow, so today would be his only chance for a while.”

“Unless you name your child something completely ridiculous with numbers, unpronounceable gibberish, or after some poison, then what you name them is no one else’s business,” Athena huffed. “I’ll talk to them all about respecting your boundaries. In person.”

“Could you please let everyone know that from now on, visits will be by our invitation only?” Tommy asked. “We want to focus on our daughter and build our schedule around her right now. Not delay going to the NICU because we need to deal with other people’s demands instead.”

“I’ll pass the message along. And thank you for sending me the camera link for Bobbi. I had it open while I was doing my paperwork this morning. Made it all much easier to deal with when I could just watch her every time I got frustrated. I think Elaine and I spent a solid fifteen minutes just cooing at Bobbi trying to rip her feeding tube out.”

Buck groaned at the reminder. “Gray told us all about that as soon as we got back to the NICU. He said he had to put these little mittens on her so she wouldn’t be able to grab it. He called them baby handcuffs.”

“Except then she somehow managed to get the mittens off and pull her feeding tube out again,” Tommy added.

“Well, my grandbaby comes by the troublemaking honestly, at least,” Athena mused.

_______

Buck had hoped that, with Athena in uniform as his messenger, that it would be the end of the uninvited visitors. And while he was in the hospital and for the few days that he was ‘home,’ everyone respected his wishes and waited until he or Tommy invited them before trying to visit. Even then, most of their visitors ended up being either the Grants or Tommy friends. Miriam and Jake had visited nearly every day, insisting on helping with the chores around the house so that Buck and Tommy could be at the hospital as much as possible.

Then, when Bobbie was nine days old, they were ambushed. It started with a knock on Tommy’s front door while the couple were eating breakfast before their daily trip to the hospital.

“Mr. and Mrs. Buckley. Hi, how can I help you this morning?” Tommy greeted them. The layout of the house meant that Buck could hear everything from the kitchen. Normally he would try to make himself busy and ignore the conversation since it really isn’t his business, but this time he had no shame about listening in.

“Good morning, Thomas. Maddie told us about the baby and gave us your address,” Margaret told him. “We wanted to check on Evan and meet our new grandbaby.”

“Please, call me Tommy. Absolutely no one ever calls me Thomas unless it’s for something official.”

“Oh, but Thomas is such a nice name,” Margaret simpered.

“It is, but it’s also not the name I go by. If you talk about Thomas to someone who knows me, they aren’t going to know who you’re talking about.”

“We understand, Tommy,” Phillip interjected. “Can we come in and see Buck and our new granddaughter?”

“Evan is in the kitchen,” Tommy told them as he finally let the older couple into the house. “But Maddie didn’t mention that the baby was still in the hospital?”

“What do you mean the baby is still in the hospital?” Margaret gasped.

“I mean that she’s still in the NICU. She was born a little early and needs a little help.”

“What kind of help does Phillippa need? How early was she? Is she going to live? Why didn’t Evan call us?” Margaret spat out in rapid fire. Buck really shouldn’t have been surprised that those were the things that his mother was concerned about. But there was one question that really confused him.

Apparently Tommy was just as confused and curious as he was. “Phillippa?” he questioned as the group finally made it into the kitchen where Buck was finishing up his breakfast while he pumped.

“Maddie may not have told us that the baby was still in the hospital, but she did mention that you named your daughter after Evan’s father.”

“Did she specifically tell you that we named her Phillippa?” Buck asked his mother.

“No, just that you- Evan! What are you doing? This is not appropriate at all!” Margaret snapped once she caught sight of the pump attached to Buck’s chest. Since it was just him and Tommy, Buck hadn’t bothered trying to cover up at all. He may have thrown a cover over his chest just to make himself more comfortable, but part of him was extremely petty and wanted to make his mother just as uncomfortable as payback for the unannounced visit.

“I’m pumping so that Bobbi has milk that the nurse can feed her when I’m not there,” Buck blandly stated, putting his fork down and drinking the last of his water. Tommy was quick to pour him some more since they had learned early on that pumping made him extremely thirsty. And hungry, which is why he tended to do it at meal times or with a snack.

“In the kitchen? That is completely unsanitary! And with guests?!”

“My kitchen, my home. And I don’t see how it’s unsanitary. It’s literally food that I make for my baby. As for doing it when I have guests, I wasn’t exactly expecting anyone this morning.”

“You named the baby Bobbi?” Phillip quietly interrupted before a fight could truly begin. Buck thought that his birth father looked more resigned than disappointed, like he should have expected that they didn’t actually name their daughter after him.

“We named her Barbara, but we’re calling her Bobbi,” Tommy gently explained.

“Bobby Nash adopted me before he died. We named our daughter after him,” Buck bluntly told his biological parents. Because really, that’s all they were to him at this point. “So yes, I named Bobbi after my father, just not Phillip.”

“We never consented to that!” Margaret snapped. Phillip just stayed off to the side, staring blankly ahead of himself.

“You didn’t have to. I’m a fully capable adult and the only consent needed was mine and Bobby’s.

“And let’s face the truth. Maddie might be convinced that our relationship can be fixed, but there’s nothing to fix. You’ve both been basically checked out of my life unless I was hurt for as long as I can remember. And I get it now. I know that you were grieving. Having a baby in the NICU, constantly worrying about her even though all of the doctors and nurses tell us that she’ll be okay, I have a lot of sympathy for what you guys went through with Daniel. But your grief is only an explanation for how you guys treated me, not an excuse. It doesn’t change the facts.”

Buck couldn’t tell if the tears in Maragert’s eyes were genuine guilt for how he’d grown up or if she was just like Maddie. Crying at the drop of a hat anytime some hurt her feelings. Phillip at least looked a little guilty, though still resigned.

“We don’t have a previous relationship to return to, not like you two do with Maddie. And I tried, for her. I did therapy with you guys, but didn’t really change anything about our relationship, only made all of us understand why it is the way that it is. I don’t call you, you guys don’t call me, and the only one who has a problem with that is Maddie because it ruins her image of the perfect sitcom family that she wants for Jee and my new nephew.

“Bobby Nash raised me. He taught me how to cook, how to tie a tie, and how to be a good partner. Bobby Nash taught me how to be a man and how to fix things around my apartment or a house myself instead of calling someone to fix it for me. He was there every time that I was in the hospital. Every time that I needed advice. He loved me with no exceptions. Just unconditionally. Bobby was my father in every single way that actually matters. So Tommy and I named our new baby, our little miracle, after him and Tommy’s mom. Barbara Lynn Kinard and we’re going to call her Bobbi.”

“I don’t get why you would give her such a nice name and then not use it,” Margaret complained, taking a seat at the kitchen table and ignoring everything that Buck had just said.

Buck huffed in response to that, already over his birth parents’ visit. He needed a second to calm down before he did something that he would regret once he wasn’t so angry, so Buck just focused on disconnecting the pump and handing the attached bottles over to his partner so that the contents could be transferred over to a bag and then into the cooler that they filled every morning with what Buck had pumped the night before. Once that was done, Buck threw on a shirt and started to clean up from breakfast. “We’re not using her full name all the time because having a nickname is normal, Margaret.” Buck ignored his mother’s outrage at the use of her actual name instead of calling her Mom and just kept going. “Hell, in Russia it’s actually expected that parents use a nickname for their child and that close family and friends will do the same. And ultimately, what we call our daughter is mine and Tommy’s choice and this is what we want.”

“Buck’s right, Margret. What he and Tommy name their child and if they use a nickname is up to them. He’s also right about the fact that when it comes down to it, we didn’t raise him. We left that to Maddie while we drowned in our grief instead of getting help for it. Maddie taught him how to ride a bike, she helped him with his homework, she comforted him after nightmares before she left for college. We only paid attention to Buck when he was hurt because it made us feel guilty,” Phillip lectured his wife. “So if Buck wanted the man who was there for him and made him actually feel loved and wanted to be legally recognized as his father and to honor him by naming his daughter after the man, how can we protest that?”

Phillip was by no means a perfect, or even a good father, but he always did seem to have more awareness about his actions affected his children, Buck mused to himself.

“Why did you guys even come out here?” Buck eventually sighed, turning to face his birth parents now that he no longer had the dishes to distract him. “You’ve never come out here for me before and you don’t do well with hospitals, so it’s not like you’ll go see Bobbi in the NICU.”

“We didn’t know that she was still in the hospital,” Margaret primly reminded him. “We were worried about you, Evan. We had to hear from Maddie that you had a baby when we didn’t even know that you were expecting. I mean, we didn’t even know that you were a carrier!”

“And who’s fault is that?” Buck muttered under his breath.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“I said, who’s fault is that? You two are the ones who decided not to have me tested for the carrier gene. Actually, worse than that, you didn’t have me tested and you put down that I was negative on my medical files and somehow got a doctor to go along with it so I didn’t even know that should get myself tested. You just assumed that since I was made to match Daniel that I must also be negative for the gene like he was. But I’m not Daniel and you guys have never been able to truly understand that or forgive me for it.”

“You’re right, Buck. We’ve done wrong by you and I’m sorry. Nothing can make up for what we, what I did, but I’m still so sorry,” Phillip declared.

Curse his big heart, but Buck felt sorry for the man. “You’re right. There’s nothing that you can do to make up for that, for how you abandoned me while we were all still living in the same house. And I will never look at you two as my parents. But I think that if we can just accept that, maybe we can still have some kind of relationship. Probably more like a distant aunt and uncle with their nephew, but something,” Buck offered up.

“And Barbara? What kind of grandparents would we be if you don’t even recognize us as your parents?”

“Before Jee was born, you guys brought her piles and piles of gifts. You gave Maddie a box full of stuff from when she was a baby. I know you don’t have a box like that for me and I don’t see any gifts for Bobbi,” Buck pointed out to Margaret, who still didn’t seem able to understand what was happening. “So how do you see this going? Because you can’t even treat my daughter the same as Maddie’s, so why should I trust the two of you to be her grandparents?”

“Look,” Tommy spoke up for the first time since he let the older Buckleys into his house, trying to take some control of a conversation that just kept going in circles. “This discussion obviously isn’t productive right now and Evan and I have a busy afternoon today, so we want to spend as much of the morning with our daughter as we can. So how about we all go our separate ways, take some time to cool down, and return to this talk later.”

“That’s a good idea, Tommy,” Phillip agreed. “Come on, Margaret. Let’s go see Maddie.”

_______

Seeing Bobbi was shaping up to be the only good part of Buck’s day. Dr. Bergeron had finally taken her off of the CPAP and transitioned her over to the smallest nasal cannula Buck had ever seen and one of her nurses had even mentioned that Dr. Bergeron was considering trying a bottle feed the next day. If it was successful, then soon Bobbi would be moved out of the NICU entirely and into the step down unit. It was a major win. But before they could celebrate any of that, he and Tommy had to get through two potentially terrible meetings.

They had just arrived at the first one. A mediation session in the courthouse with the Rileys, their lawyer, the lawyers for the clinic, and a third party mediator who was trying to help everyone avoid a lengthy trial. Buck was dreading it.

“What are you humming?” he asked Tommy as they walked into the imposing building, trying to distract himself. “You were humming it earlier too, when you were holding Bobbi.”

“It’s an old Stevie Wonder song. My mom used to listen to him all of the time and I guess I’ve been thinking about this particular song lately.”

“What’s it called? I kind of recognize it.”

“‘Isn’t She Lovely,’” Tommy told him. “ Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she wonderful? Isn’t she precious? Less than one minute old. I never thought, that through love we’d be, making one as lovely as she. But isn’t she lovely? Made from love.”

Neither of them were known for being able to hold a tune, but Buck found Tommy singing the song to him that he normally hummed to their daughter, incredibly soothing. “I think it fits her. Bobbi was definitely made from love. Love and baked goods.”

“That she was.”

Any further discussion was halted as they were called into the conference room that they were all meeting in. In all, there were nine people sitting around the large table that dominated the room. Tommy and Buck on one side with Mr. Grady, Connor and Kameron with their lawyer at the far end, then two lawyers representing the clinic across from Buck and Mr. Grady, and the mediator for the court sat at the head of the table. He would be the one who ran the meeting and he started it off by instructing everyone to introduce themselves.

“Now that we’re all familiar with who everyone is, let’s get down to business. Now, we have two separate, but connected lawsuits here, correct? Mr. Buckley and Mr. Kinard, and then Mr. and Mrs. Riley, both against Hopeful Beginnings Fertility Clinic. Since Mr. Buckley and Mr. Kinard filed first, they’ll present their case first, then Mr. and Mrs. Riley will present theirs, and then we’ll hear from the clinic’s representatives. If there is a settlement to be offered today, we can also begin to discuss those terms,” the mediator, a Mr. James Crane, instructed all of them. He laid down the expected behavior from everyone, and then motioned for Mr. Grady to begin.

And so, the two parties began making their cases. Any hope that Buck previously had of this staying out of a courtroom flew out the window when he realized that the two clinic lawyers, Kendra Green and David Melendez, were barely paying attention to Mr. Grady, but couldn’t pay close enough attention to Ms. Carmichael, Connor and Kameron’s lawyer. What little hope was left crashed to the ground and was confirmed dead and buried when Ms. Green and Mr. Melendez had their turn to speak.

“We, meaning Hopeful Beginnings and their associates, are unwilling to agree to any type of settlement with Mr. Buckley and Mr. Kinard. It is the clinic’s position that they simply do not have a case. Mr. Buckley willingly signed over his rights to any child produced from his sperm and how the clinic used said sperm. If there was some kind of mistake, it simply doesn’t affect Mr. Buckley.

“We are, however, willing to settle with Mr. and Mrs. Riley,” Ms. Green stated. She almost sounded smug about all of it and Buck wanted to reach across the table and shake her. Apparently postpartum hormones were no joke.

Mr. Melendez took over from her at that point. “There would be conditions of course. The clinic accepts that the Rileys had a specific donor picked out for their child. We’d like a paternity test to confirm that neither Mr. Buckley nor Mr. Riley are the child’s biological father to start with. If the test comes back negative, then the clinic will agree to settle the case with a monetary payment to Mr. and Mrs. Riley with the amount to be negotiated between the two parties. If the Rileys accept, then the clinic will not admit to any wrongdoing on their part, there won’t be an official investigation into what happened, and we would require them to sign an NDA.”

Buck watched Connor and Kameron furiously whisper with their lawyer for a couple of minutes before doing exactly what he expected and agreeing to the settlement terms.

“Well, then that’s that,” Mr. Melendex said as he began to pack up his things.

“Not so fast, Mr. Melendex,” Mr. Grady stopped him. “There’s still the matter of my clients’ case.”

“Your clients don’t have a case, Grady. Be realistic,” Mr. Melendez scoffed.

“I disagree,” Mr. Crane stated. The whole meeting, he’d been acting as an independent moderator, rarely speaking up except for the occasional clarifying question while he flipped through the relevant documents that all parties had provided to him. “Mr. Buckley signed a very specific contract here. At least, according to the version that he and the Rileys both provided. The clinic failed to provide me with their copy of the contract, but I can assume that it matches what I already have in front of me. In the contract, it clearly states that Mr. Buckley only consented to his donation being used to help Mr. and Mrs. Riley conceive, no one else. Paperwork provided to him and the Rileys by Hopeful Beginnings, again, provided by both parties but not by the clinic itself, makes clear that the clinic would run a variety of medical tests on Mr. Buckley’s blood and semen sample in order to rule out possible genetic conditions that would preclude donation. That same paperwork states that all results would be made available to the donor and Mr. Buckley has provided those results.”

“To recap, since it seems that my counterparts weren’t paying sufficient attention earlier, we did have them examined by a third party reproductive specialist who stated that the results are consistent with Mr. Buckley being incredibly virile and more than sufficient as a donor with no concerning genetic markers,” Mr. Grady specified once more. “Considering my client is a carrier and incapable of producing sperm, I’d say there’s an issue. Either your clinic mixed up the patients so severely that you gave the wrong test results to my client and the wrong sperm to the Rileys, or, you never ran the test in the first place and faked the results for some reason, or the final option, you did run the tests, faked the results for some reason and purposely used the wrong sperm to help Mrs. Riley conceive.”

“Our clinic is extremely thorough and reputable,” Ms. Green nearly snarled. “We would never do such a thing.”

“And what possible reason could we have for covering up Mr. Buckley’s test results?” Mr. Melendez challenged. “Actually, how do we know that Mr. Buckley isn’t lying about his carrier status now? Afterall, to go over thirty years not knowing?”

“I’d say the baby that my client delivered via c-section less than two weeks ago is sufficient enough proof that he’s a carrier.”

“It is my position that based on the evidence, and lack of evidence provided to me that Mr. Buckley and Mr. Kinard have a case. If the Rileys and Hopeful Beginnings can come to some sort of settlement agreement for their own lawsuit, I would warn that the no investigation clause cannot be used as an excuse not to investigate what happened on Mr. Buckley’s behalf,” Mr. Crane cautioned.

“Since it’s obvious to everyone in the room that you ignored what I said earlier in favor of standing by whatever decision you apparently made before even walking into the room, my clients will be seeking coverage of all medical bills related to Mr. Buckley’s recent pregnancy and birth, as well as damages, compensation for the emotional distress they’ve experienced as a result of this mess, and full and transparent investigation into how this happened. They are very concerned about the possibility of this happening to someone else.”

Chapter Thirteen

“I mean, the hits just keep coming and I don’t know how much more of this that Evan can take,” Tommy complained to his friends as they helped him pack up Evan’s, no, Diaz’s home.

“I still can’t believe that Buck isn’t fighting back on Diaz kicking him out with no notice,” Jake yelled from the bathroom. Jake was the only person that Tommy could trust not to hold anything he found in there over his head. And he and Evan had been very careful to remove anything potentially embarrassing from the house very early on in the moving process.

“Seriously, not even giving him time to pack up all of his stuff,” Sal bitched. “I know a guy if Buckley changes his mind about fighting Diaz on this.

“Thanks, Sal, but Evan is pretty firm about just letting it go. We already started moving his stuff over to my place and the dream house before he let Evan know he was moving back in, so it’s not like it’ll take too long to move everything over now.

“As for not being able to believe that Diaz would do this to his so-called best friend, I absolutely can,” Tommy yelled back to Jake. “Diaz is only thinking about himself and his son right now, not Evan. He wants to move back to LA and he wants to make sure that everything is ‘normal’ for Chris. Fuck what that means for anyone else.” Just thinking about how Diaz hadn’t cared at all about where Evan would go when he told him to be out of the house by the end of the week pissed him off. Tommy needed to get himself under control before he destroyed any more of their packing materials.

“Did Buck really tell Diaz to take him out of his will in front of everyone?” Miriam questioned. She was helping Tommy with packing up the last of the kitchen supplies while Sal taped up boxes of books and photos in the living room.

“Oh yeah,” Tommy chuckled. Attending the meeting that Evan had called with sister and the One-Eighteen had been the last thing he had wanted to do after having his morning interrupted by the Buckley parents and sitting through a disaster of a mediation about his and Evan’s lawsuit against the Rileys’ fertility clinic. The feeling of dread had gotten worse when Maddie had tried to throw him out, stating that the meeting was for family only. Eventually, Evan had gotten his way and Tommy had stayed. It had been worth it to watch the One-Eighteen attempt to hold some kind of intervention for Evan and all of the drama that had ended up happening right in front of him. “Apparently no one else knew that Evan was named in Diaz’s will, but him telling Diaz to take him out of it still caused a whole lecture on how Evan should respect Diaz’s right as a parent to decide what happens to Chris if he dies. Evan tearing that argument apart was a thing of beauty.”

“Wait, this is all about what happens to Diaz’s kid if he dies?” Sal gasped, now fully engaged in the gossip. The need to be nosey and get the good gossip was a trait that all firefighters shared.

“Yep. As of right now, if Diaz dies or is somehow incapable of taking care of Chris, Evan gets custody. We’re waiting to see if Diaz will actually change it or update Evan either way. It took him a year to tell Evan about his decision after he made the will in the first place.”

“Wiat, so this isn’t like a new thing?”

“Nope. According to Evan, Diaz changed his will right around Covid lockdown, but he didn’t tell Evan about it until over a year had passed and Diaz had almost been killed by that sniper that was going after the LAFD.”

“I’m sorry, but first of all, that’s fucked up,” Miriam bluntly stated. “What if Diaz had actually died and Buckley wasn’t prepared to fight for Chris against Diaz’s family? Second of all, wasn’t this kid just living with Diaz’s parents in Texas? Why can’t they take him in again if something were to happen now?”

“I don’t know what goes on Diaz’s mind or why he thought waiting to tell Evan was a good idea, but I do know that the way Evan interpreted it, was that Diaz was telling him about the guardianship because Evan took a risk during the whole crisis and Diaz was hoping knowing that he needed to be there for Chris would curb Evan’s willingness to risk himself in the future.”

“Well fuck that,” Jake bitched as he carried a box full of odds and ends into the living room to tape up and stack with the others. “Risking yourself for others is just part of being a firefighter. Does Buck take more risks than other firefighters? Maybe, but it’s not Diaz’s place to try and get him to be smarter about it, it’s the captain’s job to do that.”

“What did Buckley do that pissed Diaz off so much?”

“He climbed a crane out in the open with no protection while the sniper was still at large. The way he describes it, he realized that there was no way to protect whoever was going to make that climb, SWAT or no SWAT, and the patient was running out of time. Everyone else on the call who were certified to make that kind of rescue all had partners and kids waiting on them at home, so Evan just did it. I can’t argue with his reasoning because if I had been in his shoes I probably would’ve done the same.

“I also get everyone else’s point of view. Evan’s self worth was really tied to his position as a firefighter for a long time and part of the way that manifested was that he thought his life was worth less than his coworkers with families. He didn’t have anyone living in his home with him, so he felt that it was better for him to risk his life on the job rather than him.”

“I mean, that’s not great, but it’s a pretty common mindset for a lot of firefighters,” Sal pointed out.

“Yep, but I mean, the One-Eighteen didn’t exactly handle that very well.”

“What did Buck say about the whole Chris having already stayed with his family in Texas?” Miriam asked.

“Oh, Evan did not let that go. When Diaz told Evan about his choice years ago, he said it was because he couldn’t trust his parents to raise Christopher the way that Diaz wanted and he also couldn’t trust that anyone else in his family would stand up to his parents. As far as Diaz was concerned, the only person who would make sure to raise Chris the he wanted was Evan,” Tommy explained.

“And yet Diaz trusted his kid with his parents last year?” Jake clarified.

“Looking back on it, with everything that Evan knows now and everything that’s happened, he’s not exactly comfortable with Diaz’s reasoning that he trusts Evan more. One, no court would side with Evan about custody for exactly what Miriam pointed out. Chris lived with Diaz’s parents for over six months, with Diaz’s willing permission and by Chris’ choice. If something happened now, what court would look at that and side with Evan if it came down to a custody dispute?”

“No shit,” Sal muttered. “Six months is enough time to establish residency. Diaz should consider himself lucky that his parents take advantage of that fact to sue him for custody in Texas. Hell, they still can until he’s been living in California again for six months. I know because Gina and I had to deal with all of that when we were trying to get custody of our nieces.”

“Oh, Evan said all of that too. Really pissed Diaz off.”

“What’s the other reason that Buckley doesn’t want to take Diaz’s kid if the worst happens?” Jake asked as he started to move all of the boxes so they could move them out of the way for the moving company that was coming to take all of the furniture to the dream house the next day. All they needed to move in their own vehicles was the boxes and smaller things like end tables.

“Diaz has this horrible habit of using Chris against Evan. He either withholds access to punish him or he uses Chris to get Evan to forgive him or move past however Diaz treated him. He’ll use him as a last minute babysitter, but he’ll make jokes that Evan’s just a big kid himself and tell him that he doesn’t know anything about parenting.

“Taking all of that into consideration, Evan really isn’t comfortable with being Christopher’s guardian if anything happens to Diaz anytime soon.”

“I wouldn’t be either!” Sal scoffed.

“Oh, it gets worse,” Tommy sarcastically chuckled. “Because somehow, it all devolved into who would get custody of Bobbi if something happens to Evan.”

“You mean, you and Buck, right?” Miriam asked him. By her tone, Tommy guessed that she already knew the answer, but he said it anyway.

“No, they just assumed that if Evan died, even if I’m still alive, I wouldn’t get custody of my own daughter. Maddie assumed that it would be her and Chimney, but they kept hemming and hawing about how they already have their kids, so it would be hard, but how could they turn away family. Then Diaz voiced that he was Evan’s best friend and of course we would trust him with our baby. Hen was going to add her own two cents, but then Karen nearly slapped a hand over her mouth.”

“Wow. The audacity to assume that you guys would give any of them custody in an emergency. Hell, the audacity to just cut you out of the picture entirely, right in front of you.” Jake looked genuinely impressed by the nerve of Evan’s friends and family.

“Well, then we had to tell them that none of them were our first, or even our second choices, for Bobbi’s guardians if something happens to us,” Tommy bemoaned. “We’re still trying to figure out the order, but they are all pretty low down on the list of who we would want to raise her.”

Tommy was lucky to have the friends that he did, because they all just let the topic rest instead of trying to press him about if any of them were on the list. Instead, they just focused on bringing boxes out to the four vehicles they had between them, trying to organize them and pack them so that they could hopefully take just one trip over to the dream house. It was when they were unpacking everything at their destination that Sal brought up the other topic that was hanging over his and Evan’s heads.

“Has Buckley decided what he’s going to do once his paternity leave is up?”

“Not yet. Mehta suggested the academy, but Evan’s still hopeful that he can be a captain one day and is leaning toward a station transfer.”

“If I can add my two cents, he should take the academy transfer,” Sal suggested. “Word amongst the captains is that brass are basically set in approving Han’s promotion to permanent captain for the One-Eighteen. I guess they’re trying to keep everyone together or they feel bad or something. But there’s one major problem that the brass either don’t know about or are ignoring, and that’s Howard Han’s inability to keep his fucking trap shut.”

“Oh God, what’s he saying now?” Tommy groaned.

“Whatever he can to get other captains to not accept Buckley’s transfer. That he’s reckless, has a deathwish, doesn’t play well with others, got through the academy by sleeping with female members of the department who could fudge his scores because he was too dumb to pass the written parts himself. Herrmann over at Sixty-One heard that Buckley just played on Nash’s favoritism and kept blackmailing people to get all of the certifications he has. Han’s trying to make sure that even if someone accepts Buckley’s transfer, no one will trust him if they need to work a call with his new house.”

“I bet you that’s all Maddie. She has this thing about Evan being an adult. As far as she’s concerned, he’s still a little kid who needs someone actively looking after him and doesn’t deserve the autonomy to make his own choices. Off of work, she does that but on the job? It’s Han who ‘keeps an eye on him’ and reports everything back to Maddie. She and Han also have this weird no secrets pact that includes secrets that others confide in them.”

“What, people are still trusting Han with their secrets? That blabbermouth?” Sal snorted. They’d both known the other man for over a decade, so they were well acquainted with Howard Han’s inability to keep a secret.”

“Oh, he’s gotten better. He can keep a secret now, so long as the secret is only kept from Evan. He’ll tell everyone else, hell, Han will tell complete strangers Evan’s private medical history that Maddie confided in him, but he won’t tell Evan. Evan’s fucking medical history and he helped keep it from him.”

“So he can’t keep his private and professional lives separate?” Miriam groaned. “Great. Fucking wonderful.”

“No, but I mean, is that really a surprise? Sal, back me up here, how often did you and I witness Han trying to use the job to pick up women?”

“Ugh. Way too much. If he was trolling at the bar and you weren’t around for him to say ‘look, I carried this guy out of a fire once,’ then he would claim to do things that you did on calls because it was more ‘impressive’ than being a paramedic,” Sal confirmed. “I’m honestly surprised that he actually settled down with one woman and had a kid. I figured that he would be the eternal bachelor forever considering he was more concerned with chasing tail and getting an easy lay in his thirties than he was with building anything real.”

“I guess almost dying off the job and meeting his future wife changed him.”

“Not enough,” Sal joked bitterly.

_______

It felt like an eternity and no time at all to Buck before he and Tommy finally got to bring Bobbi home. She had spent five weeks in the hospital, but in that time she had gained back her birth weight and over a pound more on top of that, perfected her latch, and no longer needed any kind of breathing support or oxygen. Dr. Bergeron had seemed genuinely overjoyed by her progress when she had gone over it with her fathers during her carseat test. With that final milestone passed, Dr. Bergeron happily discharged Bobbi and sent the little Kinard family home, finally complete.

There was one more thing that Buck wanted to do before they left the hospital entirely. When Buck had put his family in time out following the absolutely disastrous meeting he had called about all of the uninvited visitors they’d been receiving, he’d also made it clear that the one and only exception to his no contact rule would be letting him know when his sister went into labor. Chimney hadn’t actually texted him until after Maddie had given birth, but Buck was too tired to find out if that was just forgetfulness from the stress and excitement, or his brother-in-law being petty about the time out he was in. Either way, Maddie had safely given birth and now everyone was gathering at the hospital to meet the newest Han. It would probably be Buck and Tommy’s only chance to meet their nephew anytime soon and it was also the first chance for most of them to meet Bobbi thanks to the strict visitor policies for the NICU and their behavior. So, after some debate the night before, Buck and Tommy were making a quick pit stop on their way out of the hospital.

They ended up barely beating Athena to Maddie and Baby Boy Han’s room, which meant that unfortunately, the couple got a front row seat to Athena learning that Maddie and Chimney had followed through on their plans to name their son Robert Nash Han. Somehow, in all of the chaos and despite everyone’s attempts to get Buck to change his daughter’s name, no one had actually told Athena about it. At least, that was how Buck was choosing to interpret the raised eyebrow that she gave the couple. It also probably wasn’t the best idea to tell her when she was holding the baby.

“Hey, Robbie,” she cooed to the newborn, graciously avoiding the topic of the full name for now.

“We were actually planning to call him Bobby,” Maddie explained, cuddling up with Jee-Yun in her hospital bed. Buck was suddenly reminded that his older sister had never gotten this experience before, introducing everyone to her day old baby. When Jee was born, the hospital hadn’t allowed anyone in thanks to Covid. Buck had barely been allowed to see them from the hallway after dropping their stuff off, and that was only because he was still in uniform and the nurses decided to look the other way. Now, Maddie and Chim were getting a slight do-over, and Buck was happy for it. Despite the two of them currently being at the top of his shit list, Buck still only wanted good things for them.

“I thought Uncle Buck’s baby was Bobbi?” Jee tried to whisper to her mom. Like most kids her age, she was adorably bad at it.

“No, her name is Barbara, Bobbi is just a nickname,” Buck explained. “And lots of people have the same nickname.”

Chim’s, “hmph,” at that was so loud that Buck felt the need to look over at his baby to make sure that she was still asleep in her carseat. Thankfully she was, but it was a reminder that they needed to get going so that they could get her home and out of her carseat sooner rather than later. Spending too long in the seat wasn’t recommended or good for her and Buck didn’t trust half of these people enough to let them hold his baby. He was scared that taking her out would only encourage them to ask and he wanted to avoid having to say no.

“Do you have a problem with that, Chimney?” Athena questioned. “Because from where I stand, Buck isn’t wrong and two children can absolutely share a nickname or a similar first name.”

“Nothing. I just find it a little that Buck and Tomy keep saying that kids can share the same nickname. It will probably get a little confusing considering they’re the same age and cousins. Might as well give Barbara a different nickname now as well if no one is going to use Bobby’s. I mean, I feel like we’re all missing the obviously perfect one, Barbie.”

“Don’t ever call my daughter that again, Han,” Buck growled. “You’ve ‘joked’ about my intelligence one too many times for me to be even slightly okay with that.”

“I think Barbie is cool, Uncle Buck,” Jee pouted. “She has lots and lots of jobs.”

How to explain the controversy of Barbie in child friendly terms? It’s not like she was old enough to show her the Margot Robbie movie. “It is cool how many jobs Barbie has,” he agreed. “But some people only notice that she’s pretty and has blonde hair and nice clothes, so they think that means she’s not very smart.”

“Well that’s dumb.”

“Language, Jee-Yun!” Maddie chastised.

“It is!” the preschooler insisted.

“You’re right, Jee, but so’s your mom. It’s not nice to call people dumb.” Actually, Buck privately thought that was kinda the whole point of his little mini-lesson to his niece about Barbie. That it isn’t nice to call people dumb. At least she was basing her opinion on someone’s actions though, and not their appearance.

“I’m gonna call him Nash,” Jee declared once her brother was back in her line of sight.

“Mommy and I would really like to call him Bobby though,” Chimney tried to persuade his daughter.

“Uh uh,” she disagreed. “Uncle Buck’s baby was Bobbi first.”

“Well, the big sister has spoken,” Karen announced, bringing an end to the name debate. “We officially have Bobbi Kinard and Nash Han.”

“We just wanted to stop in and say congrats,” Tommy finally spoke up. To the others, he probably seemed happy and laid back, but buck knew his partner well enough to see that he was at his limit when it came to being around multiple people he was pissed at. “We’ve got to get this little lady home now.”

The tight smile that Maddie had worn since they walked in fell at that. Whether it was because she was actually disappointed that they were leaving or something else, Buck would never know. “I figured you guys were going to stay. It’s been forever since we were all together like this and Athena’s the only one who’s gotten to meet Barbara yet.”

“I’m sorry, mMddie. Today’s just not a good day. We wouldn’t even have brought Bobbi by if she wasn’t literally just released. We’ve spent way too long with her in the hospital the last few weeks. Right now, Tommy and I want to take our baby home, plus, I think your nurse is going to come break up the party soon anyway, so we should probably just beat her to the punch and get going so your family can bond.”

“You’re family, too, Evan,” Maddie sighed like she was disappointed he didn’t understand a basic concept.

“Mm, but not close family. And that’s okay. I’m glad that you and Nash are both okay. Congrats, Maddie.”

“Is it okay if Hen and I stop by tomorrow? I’m dying to meet your little girl properly,” Karen whispered in his ear when she went in for a hug on his way out the door. Finally, someone who asked before dropping by.

“Sure. Bring the kids. Athena will give you the address.”

_______

“Are you guys moving?” Denny bluntly asked once the Wilson family was through Tommy’s door.

“Denny, manners!” Karen reprimanded him. “At least say hello first!”

“Hey, Tommy. Hey, Buck. Are you guys moving?”

“Hey, Denny,” Tommy greeted him back, Buck adding his own hello from the couch where he was giving Bobbi her bottle and getting some prime skin to skin time in.

“And we are moving soon, so please forgive the mess.”

“Don’t even worry about that. In fact, you should get used to the mess now that you have a little one in the house full time,” Karen warned. She disappeared for a second into the kitchen and Buck heard the sink turn on. He appreciated that she was washing her hands without him even needing to ask her to.

“You two are brave, moving with a newborn,” Hen teased him. She visibly hesitated before she asked her next question. “Are you planning to stay in LA?”

It was a valid question, Buck quickly realized. The only people in his circle who knew about the move were the Grants and Ravi, and none of them would say anything. The distance that had grown between him and the other members of the One-Eighteen combined with all of the trouble that Buck and Tommy were in with the department, moving away from LA would be a logical conclusion. Luckily, they weren’t moving that far away, so the couple would still be able to lean on their support network. A network that was maybe a little bit bigger than they thought when they woke up that morning.

“We are. Tommy is on paternity leave for the department for now and I’m on medical leave for one more week and then I’ll start my own paternity leave,” Buck explained. “But we still have jobs with the LAFD. Actually, considering how lucky we are that that’s true with how angry the upper brass are with me and Tommy for the whole helicopter thing, they’re being surprisingly accommodating.”

“Good. I was really worried about how much trouble you two would be in,” Karen admitted as she took a seat beside Hen on the loveseat facing the couch. “The department seemed like they were looking for someone to blame and you guys would have been the perfect targets since you weren’t actually in the lab.”

Buck took a second to check on Denny and Mara, who were thoroughly distracted by helping Tommy pack up all of his DVDs. Judging by the looks Mara was throwing Tommy’s way, even those were ancient by her standards. And to think that Buck grew up with VCRs and VHS tapes. God, he was starting to feel old. At least the two kids who would be able to understand him were suitably distracted, so he could be honest with Karen.

“I think the only reason that we weren’t fired outright was because the department was even angrier with the Army than they were with us. We were both suspended for a week, with pay, but it’s still a suspension on our records, Tommy’s grounded once he’s back from leave, and we’re both ineligible for even a temporary promotion for the next two years,” he confessed.

“And you wanted to start working towards becoming a captain yourself soon,” Hen sighed.

“I mean, I might still be able to in the future, but it’s definitely going to be harder than before all of this happened. Especially depending on how long I’m out of the field for.” Buck focused on Bobbi when he said that. He wasn’t sure how Hen would take him being out of the field for so long that it would impact his ability to move up the ranks, especially considering all of the pushback he’d been getting from Chimney and Eddie about taking too long of a leave or trying to transfer out of the One-Eighteen. Chimney had left him a voicemail a couple of days after Bobbi was born, essentially forbidding him from transferring and claiming that to do so would destroy Bobby’s legacy. It was much easier to watch his baby slowly suckle her bottle, becoming more milk drunk by the minute.

“Are you planning to extend your leave longer than the standard twelve weeks?”

This was the moment that would make or break this visit. Buck did not want to risk pissing Hen off by talking badly about her best friend, but he had swore to himself that he would stop lying or omitting things just to avoid people being angry with him for having emotions of trying to blame him for things that weren’t his fault. And if Hen was as serious about fixing their relationship as Buck was, then honesty was going to be the key for both of them.

“I’m transferring to the academy after my leave is up. The plan as of right now is that I’ll be an instructor for a year or two and then maybe move back to active duty,” he began.

“I’m sure the hours will be a lot better with a new baby,” Karen observed.

“They’re definitely more regular, and it’ll be a slight pay increase,” Buck agreed. “But mostly, it ensures that I won’t be on calls with the One-Eighteen or any other house that Chimney has connections to.”

Hen looked angry about that accusation, but her voice stayed calm. “What do you mean you won’t have to work with any houses that Chimney might have connections to?”

“Chimney has been in the LAFD for a long time and he knows a lot of people, but Tommy’s been in longer and he knows just as many people. Some of my buddies in the department and some of Tommy’s have been reaching out to warn us that Chimney is trying to sabotage my transfer. He’s spreading rumors that I only got through the academy and kept my certifications current through sex and blackmail. He’s telling people that I’m reckless to the point of endangering victims and other firefighters. Hell, one guy reached out to Tommy to ask if he was positive that Bobbi was his because he’d heard about ‘how much that Buckley guy gets around.’” Bobbi spit out her bottle and Buck welcomed the temporary distraction, throwing a towel over his shoulder so that he could burp her. It was a lot easier to calm down or stay calm when he was holding his baby, Buck noticed. “I’m already scared about going into the field now that I have Bobbi waiting for me at home and relying on me. If I can’t trust the people I’m out there with to have my back? That’s not safe for me or anyone else, regardless if it’s just me being paranoid. Working at the academy for a bit gives me time to work through all of that, Bobbi gets some stability in her routine, and hopefully some of these rumors will all die down.”

Bobbi gave the tiniest little burp before she went completely boneless in his hands, more than ready to finally take her post meal nap. Buck was surprised that Karen didn’t immediately ask to hold her with the way that she was clenching her hands over and over again, but she must respect that this wasn’t the moment and just stayed silent. Instead, Buck brought Bobbi back down to his chest so that she could curl up next to his heart. Once she was settled, he risked a glance at Hen. She looked contemplative, like she was processing his words through a lens that she had never used before.

“I really want to say that Chimney would never do any of that, but I know that’s not true. He’s desperate for you to stay, keeps going on about protecting Bobby’s legacy and how Maddie doesn’t need the stress of you somewhere where no one is keeping an eye on you. And… it wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve heard him say those kinds of things about you before.”

“Ok, time for the hard truth, Hen. Just complete and brutal honesty. Howard Han shouldn’t be captain. He can’t keep up professional boundaries, is caustic as fuck to the point it sometimes crosses over into bullying instead of joking, and he has anger management issues up the wazoo,” Buck listed off. “I’ve been his main target for years now, but since everyone already thought of me like a reckless, incompetent probie thanks in part to his slut shaming campaign back when I was actually a probie and his inability to let anything go, plus Maddie spinning all of my childhood antics like I was brainless adrenaline junkie, no one really noticed or cared about how he treated me.”

“That’s not true, Buck” Hen denied.

“Jesus Christ, Hen. Chimney punched me in the face and you all acted like I had it coming.”

“Uncle Chimney punched you?!” Denny gasped. With how worked up Buck had gotten, he’d completely forgotten about the teenager and his little sister.

“It was self defense, honey,” Hen tried to soothe Denny before turning back to Buck “Chim told me that you were trying to physically keep him from going to find Maddie and that he was just trying to defend himself.”

“Surprise, Henrietta, but Han lied. He’s really good at that. I mean, he somehow convinced you that I would put my hands on him when you know that I’m not a violent person. That time with the giant snake notwithstanding.

“No, what actually happened was that Han found out that I’d gotten a call from Maddie after she left and lost what little sanity he had left. He became convinced that I knew where she was when all my sister had told me was that Jee had been seen by a doctor, not even at the ED, just that she had seen a doctor, and Maddie needed time, but that she would come back,” Buck corrected. “Then he punched me and took off on a wild goose chase. I only got the idea she might be in Boston when Maddie called me again to ask why he wasn’t in LA. Between everyone telling me that I needed to earn Han’s forgiveness for not telling him, supporting his wish to stalk my sister across the country like her abusive ex-husband, and the fear of what he would do to me if he ever found out about the second call, I ignored my sister’s one wish to be left in peace and told him where to go.”

“Hen, sweetie, we know that Chimney has a history of lying to make himself look better when it comes to his romantic partners,” Karen gently reminded her wife. “And that when he’s angry and stressed, he doesn’t have the best control.”

“I just can’t believe that he would lie to me and that I fell for it.”

“You weren’t the only one, Hen.”

“Maybe we should move on to a topic that’s slightly less likely to upset the kids,” Tommy suggested.

“That’s a good idea. And a great chance for me to finally get to hold that precious baby!” Karen cheered.

“I just need to say one more thing to Hen, babe. Then I promise that I’ll drop it for the rest of the day,” Buck told Tommy after he passed Bobbi over into Karen’s waiting arms.

“Hit me with it. I don’t think anything else you could say would upset me anymore than I already am,” Hen laughed, wiping away a tear before it could fall down her cheek.

“When I’m gone, Chim’s favorite target for his ‘jokes’ will be gone. Who’s going to take my place?”

A knock at the front door gave the perfect excuse to avoid Hen having to actually answer that question. Buck threw on a shirt and went to answer the door, prepared to yell at whoever decided to show up. He was over uninvited guest. Just completely done with it. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, these weren’t the kind of uninvited guests he could lose his temper with.

“Mr. Grady, is everything alright?”

“Buck, there’s someone that I want you to meet.”

“Evan Buckley? My name is Egan Blakely. My brother Cameron and his wife Connie tried to use Hopeful Beginnings to have a baby and I donated for them. I think your friends may have gotten my sperm instead.”

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