“Erp! Which one?”
“Uhh, the one over here close to us.”
“Our Lady of the Universe Hospital. Right. Ping ‘em and tell ‘em I’m on my way.”
“Wilco.”
Ashton grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it, then headed out into the bullpen.
“Win! Pete! Lee! Where are you guys?” he called.
All three men stepped out of their offices, concerned expressions on their faces. Everyone else in the bullpen looked up.
“What’s wrong, Nick?” Carter asked.
“It’s Cal! It’s time!” Ashton said, grinning. “Evidently the baby took charge!”
“Hallelujah and pass the ammunition!” Peabody exclaimed, as soft, elated cries and a smattering of clapping sounded in the big room. “So one of us needs to get you to – what hospital?”
“Our Lady of the Universe. Over near ICPD.”
“Right. One of us carts you over there, and the other stays here to run things, and Lee needs to–”
“File that parental leave as active, immediately,” Carter finished for Peabody.
“I’ve got the street car,” Peabody said. “Pete, can you handle the Gang?”
“Sure thing,” Stone agreed. “Keep us posted.”
It all went smoothly. By that time, Cally’s parents were housed in a hotel near the Ashton condo, with their house sold and closed, and Nick summoned them to the hospital as Peabody drove. Weyand, Rassmussen, and Armbrand met Ashton and Peabody in the maternity waiting room, and Alexandre and Laura Ames showed up moments later.
“Come on, Nick,” Laura said. “You, Alex, and I need to get in there with her.”
“The rest of us will wait out here to hear,” Peabody said.
“Right. I’ll ping you in VR with any news,” Ashton agreed.
The trio headed for the nurse’s station.
The doctors and nurses were all on top of their game, assisting Cally in the delivery with every means at their disposal, and it only took about seven hours and forty-eight minutes for little Paul to be delivered.
“Mother and baby are doing just fine,” an elated Ashton told his colleagues in the waiting room a bit later. “The daddy is a bit wobbly, and a whole lot excited, but will be okay.”
They laughed.
“And now,” Alexandre Ames said, coming up behind Nick, “we need to get Cally and little Paul settled in at home and everything going well within the next couple days.”
“The baby doesn’t have to stay in neonatal ICU?” Rassmussen asked.
“Nope,” Ashton said. “Cal has a big enough frame that the doctor decided it was safe to ride it out a little farther in the pregnancy. They were gonna deliver first part of next week anyway, and she’s almost to natural term as it is.”
When Peabody set up a channel for the announcement, everybody in Ashton’s Gang and The Team, as well as Forensics, Director Carter, Colonel Peterson, and General Quan, came into the simulated room to find out how things were progressing. An older couple also VRed in from Flanders; they had been invited at Ashton’s specific request. Peabody moved to the front of the room and invited everyone to be seated.
“Don’t take all day, Win,” Carter declared once everyone was in a chair. “Tell us already.”
“It’s a boy – no surprise there – nineteen inches long, and seven and a half pounds,” Peabody said with a grin. “His name is Paul Hans Ashton. Mother and son are doing fine, and father, by his own admission, is a little wobbly, an’ awfully excited, but good. And happier than I think I’ve ever seen him.”
Laughter and applause mingled.
The couple from Flanders simply smiled. The woman – Nick’s Aunt Bea – dashed a tear from her eye.
By the time Cally and little Paul left the hospital a couple of days later, Cally’s parents had moved from the hotel into the spare bedroom in the Ashton condo, and a couple of weeks later, the condo they’d optioned – immediately adjacent to the Ashton condo, and on the bedroom side – became available. A quick modification by building contractors put a doorway between the condominiums, opening from the master bedroom in the Ames’ condo directly into the nursery in the Ashtons’ condo. A quick VR call had the movers bringing the furniture that had been in storage, and the older couple was comfortably ensconced in their new place within days.
The extended family settled in nicely, and Paul turned out to be a good, well-mannered baby – quickly he learned to sleep for long blocks of time at night, only waking when a feeding was needed, and seeming to time feedings to diaper changes. Most of the time, anyway.
Whenever it was Nick’s turn to care for little Paul, even in the middle of the night, he would fish out a bottle of milk that Cally had pumped and set it in a warmer while he checked the baby’s diaper. By the time he had the diaper changed – and he got good at it, pretty fast, not even minding the more unpleasant smells, so much did he love his tiny son – the milk was warm, and he settled down in the rocking armchair in the corner of the nursery to hold Paul while he drank the bottle. Then Nick gently burped the baby and cradled him while the little fellow fell asleep. Nick gently eased the infant back into the crib, and depending upon the time, headed to the den or off to bed.
He didn’t realize that his wife and her parents often watched in secret while he cared for the baby, delighted at his strength combined with tenderness.
By the time parental leave ended, Cally had healed from childbirth, and the extended family had fallen into an easy, loving routine. Paul was growing like the proverbial weed, and his maternal grandparents doted on him.
Cally and Nick hated to leave and return to work.
But Ashton found that, even there, things
