Awkward silence, much? “We’ll talk about it later.” Shelby whispered and kissed Lanie on the forehead. I could see her blush as she turned to Baylee to try and change the subject. “Mr. Baylee, how have you been? You have a big birthday coming up, don’t you?”
Baylee nodded bashfully and laughed as Shelby reached out to tickle him. “Mommy, my birthday’s comin’ up too!” Lanie smirked. She was right.
“I know, baby,” Shelby smiled. Almost as soon as the mood had calmed down in the room, we heard a soft knock on the door. We turned to see a nurse standing there. Nurses had come to be our worst enemies.
“Hi, Lanie,” the woman smiled and walked over. At least this one seemed a bit nicer from the one the day before. “My name’s Sophie. Can I take you down the hall to get your medicine?”
The grin that was originally planted on all of our faces quickly disappeared. Again?. “Wait…what?” I found my voice eventually.
“Her chemotherapy…” the nurse frowned as if I was stupid or something. “It’s a daily procedure. It’s…1:30, so it’s about that time. The doctor alternates – one day he’ll do it first thing in the morning and the next day in the afternoon. We knew she was having a rough morning this morning, so we figured it’d be best to wait until now.”
“Every day?” I glanced at Shelby. She just frowned. She felt just as helpless as I did. It wasn’t like we could say “no”. We couldn’t turn away the treatment. If we did, she’d die for sure. This was our only hope. “Lanie, sweetie?” I looked down at her. Her eyes – those big blue eyes – were almost pleading with me not to make her go. “Let’s go get your medicine, okay?” I put my hands under her arms and lifted her to my chest. I kissed the side of her head and held my free hand out to Shelby.
“We’ll see you guys later,” Shelby whispered on the way out. I could see the sympathy in Brian and Leighanne’s eyes, as well as the thankfulness to God for not giving their child a disease. That’s when the question, “Why me?” returned to my thoughts.
“I wanna go home,” Lanie mumbled against my neck. She knew exactly what was going on and she wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Hey baby,” Shelby tapped on her shoulder so she would look down at her. “How about you keep taking your medicine every day until you get better, and then maybe for your birthday we’ll talk to the doctor and see if we can all take a trip to daddy’s house, okay?” Even though we were headed to the room from Hell, Lanie’s eyes lit up and she nodded.
“Can we, daddy?” She smiled up at me. My heart skipped a beat. Lanie was used to me and Shelby being together already and it had only been two days. She was used to Shelby telling her something and me confirming it or vice versa.
“We’ll talk to the doctor about it, okay?” I repeated what Shelby had said. We walked into the room full of toys and needles and I sighed. This was not going to be easy.
After the entire procedure – which had gone fairly similar to how it went last time – I sat on Lanie’s hospital bed rubbing her back soothingly as her cries subsided. I don’t think I would ever get used to her crying like this. It was absolutely horrible.
“She asleep yet?” Shelby poked her head in the room. She had gone outside to get some air. Her eyes were still bloodshot from crying as I nodded.
“Just about,” I whispered over her blonde head. I gently stood up and placed her down on the bed. “We probably shouldn’t go too far because I have a bad feeling she’s gonna get really sick in a few hours.” I sighed, anticipating the pain she’d go through. Shelby nodded as we went out into the hallway to sit and just wait. “So what was that about earlier? What dress was she referring to?” I decided to change the topic. Besides, I had wanted to know what she was talking about.
A smile formed over her lips and she stared down at the tile floor, remembering the moment of happiness where Lanie was feeling okay and everything seemed fine. “You’re gonna laugh…”
I smiled and looked over at her with a shrug. “I could use a good laugh, actually. So though it might seem embarrassing to you, it might make me feel a whole hell of a lot better.”
“Well,” she sighed. “Lanie loves playing dress-up, and she always wants me to play with her. So she would go through my closet and find something for me to wear, though she was very disappointed that I didn’t have any crazy lime green frilly dresses or anything like that,” she chuckled and I smirked. “So, one of the first times we played, we went through and she found my wedding dress…” she trailed off and looked down at her fingers. “So I put it on…and then she started asking questions. Like, what it was from and why I had it. So I told her that it was my wedding dress. And from then on, almost daily, we’d sit down and she’d either make me put that on, tell her the story about us over and over, or go through our wedding album.”
“She did?” I sounded shocked…I guess that’s because I kinda was.
“Yeah,” Shelby smirked. “I remember I’d get so frustrated with her when she’d ask so many questions because I hated talking about it. I hated bringing those memories back up because it hurt.”
“Wow,” I muttered. Lanie must have put two and two together – she realized it was a wedding dress and she wanted Shelby to put it on again and try and push us back together. “Smart kid.”
“Hah,” Shelby nodded. “She is. I love that about her, but sometimes it really comes back to bite me in the ass. Like now.” She blushed.
“No, no…it didn’t bite you in the ass,” I chuckled and she smiled up at me. “Stories like that really make me feel good. I mean…I don’t really see Lanie that often. It’s my fault. I’m never home or I’m home and just really busy with the band or other things…” I trailed off. The past three days I had been more of a father to Lanie than ever before. That was pretty sad, considering she was already almost four years old. “But these stories where she’s talking about me or thinking about me make me feel special, ya know? It makes me feel like I’m a part of her life.”
“You are a part of her life, Nick,” Shelby reached down and put her hand on mine. “You always have been. She keeps a picture of you by her bed, ya know. It’s one of you and her at Disney in front of the castle. She plays your CDs every night. She watches you on TV whenever she can.”
“That’s scary,” I sighed. I knew what was on TV. I didn’t want her to see me with other girls.
“Don’t worry,” Shelby reassured me. “She’s never seen you on E! or anything like that. She’s seen the Oprah shows, a few TMZ videos online. I watch them first before I let her see them.”
That meant Shelby was looking for them online. She was making sure Lanie could still see my face and hear my voice, even though I didn’t call every day like a father away should or see her every weekend like Shelby and I had originally planned. “Thank you for keeping me in her life. You didn’t have to do that. You could have fought for her and won complete custody and kicked me out of the picture, but you didn’t.”
She shrugged and caught my eyes in hers. “You’re a part of her, Nick. We made her together.” And with that, we both looked at the room in front of us that held the one thing, one person, that kept us together. “I never thought I could love a person so much to create someone…and then when everything happened with us, I had so much hatred towards you, but I could never hate you. I could never bring myself to say that I hated you or believe it in my soul because Lanie has both of us in her, ya know?” I nodded. I had never thought about it that way. I had confessed my hatred for Shelby time and time again.
“I owe you so many apologies. I swear, it would take days to get everything out,” I muttered. She smiled and looked at me.
“Hey,” she caught my attention. “We’re starting over now, remember? We both said and did things we shouldn’t have and that we regret. We’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay. Because we’re a family and we’re sticking together this time.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks for the reviews!! Keep 'em coming. I'm going back to campus tomorrow =[ But I'm going to write a bunch tonight and then hopefully have something saved on Microsoft to post tomorrow. Enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
I NEED FEEDBACK.
Should I keep this story going longer and make it a long story or stop My Girl and make a sequel? I never intended this becoming a sequel, and I suppose the title really fits the story so I could easily just make it a LONG novel to read. But I want to know what you (the reader) thinks. Let me know in the reviews!
