Title: Hearts and Bones
Author: Triggersaurus
Genre: DR/CH/twins
Rating: U
Summary: Carol arrives home for recuperation

Disclaimer: If I had written this in 1992, by now I would probably be very
rich and happy, and not worrying about my student loan. In fact, I probably
wouldn't even be a student, but instead the youngest producer ever. But
unfortunately, I am nearly nine years late and therefore I cannot earn any
money from this at all and will have to keep studying geography in the hope
that I get a career some time in the distant future.

Author's Note: When I wrote 'Your Heart Is Where My Home Is', I did
completely intend it to be a stand-alone. But then I got the most fantastic
response from people and so I decided to be a nice person and write a short
follow-up/continuation as I was asked. This is it. It's a bit fluffy and may
not make a huge amount of sense if you haven't read the first fic, but it's
not important! I am classifying it as a fic by itself. The title, by the
way, is from the Paul Simon song of the same name.

On another matter, I am in the middle of writing another new stand alone,
and have also made a big breakthrough in 'Every Street'. Hopefully more of
that will be up soon. Thanks!





Hearts and Bones

"This wasn't exactly the reason I expected to be carrying you over the
threshold for."

"After three weeks of hospital food, I'm surprised we got through the door."

"What, now you're saying my lovingly prepared hampers weren't good enough?"

"Doug, a Tupperware box with a toasted cheese sandwich and an apple hardly
constitutes a hamper."
She kissed him on the nose as he put her down on the couch, "But they were
very nice anyway."

"Huh." Doug grumbled half heartedly, pretending to be hurt. He picked up the
wheelchair and placed it, folded up, by the front door before collecting the
twins in their car seats. He put them down on the couch next to Carol, and
they unpacked them from the seats. As Carol pulled Tess' sleeve off her
right arm, she looked up at Doug, who was having his own battle with Kate.

"Doug...what's that by the stairs?" she said, ominously.

"That?" Doug looked in the direction of their staircase, before Kate wailed
for his attention.

"Yes...I hope it's not what I think it is."

"It's a stairlift-"

"DOUG! Are you trying to make me feel about 80?!"

"Well it was either that or our bed would have to come downstairs, and I
wasn't about to move a double bed by myself."

Carol groaned and set Tess on a playmat on the floor.

"Besides, I don't want you trying to climb the stairs when I'm not here."

"Well I could sit and wait for you to be here. I can't believe you bought a
stairlift."

Putting Kate down on the playmat with an activity block, Doug grinned.

"You got the plastic hip, the stairlift. All you need now is to get a little
dog and knit it clothes..."

A second after he said it, his vision was obscured by the pillow that hit
him hard in the face. When he removed the feathers from his mouth, he
reached over and grabbed Carol gently around the waist. He moved her
carefully so that she rested against him as they watched the twins throw
their toys and gurgle.

"You feeling okay?" He said it seriously now, chin resting on the top of her
head.

"Yeah. It's good to be home. Even with a stairlift. You're sure you don't
mind staying here?"

"'Course. As long as you don't want a vacation later in the year, because
I'm using up all my leave as we speak."

Carol smiled. "I can manage without. Thank you for doing this."

"You can stop saying that now." He kissed her again.



The last three weeks had been some of the most emotionally draining times
Doug had ever experienced. There were constant highs and lows: Carol
returning to full consciousness, but then the realisation that Kate's right
arm would always be weaker, and shorter, than the other. Tess was discharged
the day after Carol awoke, and they discovered Carol's hip was beyond repair
and would have to be replaced. Doug felt split in about fifteen directions
as he had to care for Tess, look out for Kate who was still hospitalised,
and be there for Carol whenever he could. Also trying to get home each night
in an attempt to fake normal life for Tess was a big effort, as he hated
leaving Carol and Kate at the hospital alone.

It wasn't until half way through the second week since the accident, one
Thursday night as he sat on the couch in front of a Bulls game that it
really hit him. All this playing happy families was for real. He had two
children of his own, he had a girlfriend that he was sure he wanted to spend
the rest of his life with, if she'd let him. He had a house - two houses at
the moment, and he was sitting on a couch, unable to keep track of the game
because he was so tired, surrounded with baby formula bottles, stuffed
Sesame Street characters, pink blankets about the size of a Kleenex. It was
overwhelming. Who would have thought he'd ever be in this position?

He fingered the material of the baby coat that was next to him. He felt like
he'd only been a father for this week and a half, yet actually he'd been one
for over seven months. All that time, and he'd never really felt it until
now. The image of his own father sprung into his vision and he contemplated
the figure that he'd been trying to escape for most of his life - had he
unwittingly become him? No, he couldn't say he had. Because he knew Ray had
been around for the beginning of his life but had disappeared soon after. In
his case, he had missed the beginning of his daughter's lives, which was
something he knew he'd always regret, but he was here now. And he knew in
his heart that leaving them and Carol was never going to be something he
did, out of choice or otherwise.

Looking around the room, he saw photos on the walls, books on shelves, toys
everywhere. This place was a home. Not a house, but a home. He couldn't put
a finger on the definitive point that separated the two, but he knew for
certain that he wanted to live like this. He wanted his house back in
Washington to be a home for him and his family, not just a place that kept
them warm and dry at night. Looking around, he considered it a pity that
they would have to leave this place behind. He had missed Chicago, the
people he had worked with. Thinking about it, he realised just how good
everyone at the hospital had been, not only to Carol and Kate, but also to
him. After the circumstances in which he left, he should have expected and
deserved to be ignored, at best. But they hadn't - they had treated him with
dignity and generosity, not stopping to consider the reasons behind his
disappearance from his daughters and Carol's life for one moment. They had
been there when he had needed them, and he couldn't have asked for more.
Maybe that's what true friends were about.



"Doug, please. Let's just order pizza or something."

"Pizza? Why would I want to order pizza when I can make a fantastic mac and
cheese?"

"The last time you tried to cook something, I spent the better part of a day
cleaning the oven."

"Well that was before I discovered the ancient art of reading the cookbook."

"I'm impressed!"

"Yes. I also know not to put foil in the microwave, although the learning
process for that was a bit more dangerous."

"I'm glad to see your eyebrows survived."

"Yeah, just."

A high pitched squeal broke the conversation, and a plastic brick flew
through the air and into the side of Kate's head. Tess slapped the playmat
and reached for the next brick, as Kate started to wail. Carol bent over the
edge of the couch and hauled her injured daughter onto her lap.

"Tess. Stop it. Look, you hurt your sister. Put the brick down. Put it down.
Put it - no!" The piece of purple plastic whistled through the air and
bounced off a small coffee table, narrowly missing a photo frame. "Doug!
Come and stop your daughter from ruining my house."

"What's all this with MY daughter and YOUR house?"

Doug picked Tess up, with one oven mitt still on. Using it as a puppet, he
opened and closed the mouth of the glove in her face. She smiled and bashed
him around the side of the head.

"Ow! Tess, don't do that!"

"See. She must be your daughter, she throws things and hits people. I never
do that."

"Oh, I beg to differ. The time you hit me with a baseball bat thinking I was
a mass-murdering serial killer?"

"That was different. What did you expect, creeping around the house at 3am?"

"I expected you to remember I lived here!"

"Hm. Can you pass that tub of baby food in the fridge?"

"Oh, changing the subject. Which tub would you like? We have mashed carrot,
cream of beef and potato, liquid cereal or crushed beets...what made you buy
beets? Do they even like them?"

"Kate likes them, but I think you can throw that jar out, Doug. It's been
there for weeks now."

She watched him pull a face as he opened the jar, peered in and then threw
it into the trash. He returned to the lounge with the jar of potato and beef
and handed it to Carol. In his arms, Tess swayed about, leaning and trying
to grab anything that came within a two foot radius. Eventually becoming
frustrated, she started to whinge too, and Doug put her into a bouncing seat
that he had grown accustomed to feeding both of them in.

"Okay, since your sister is being a pig and eating all of the beef thing,
you get either carrot or cereal. Got a preference?"

The baby kicked her legs and made the chair bounce some more.
"No? Well, you ask me, cereal is for breakfast, and this is dinner time, so
it's carrots or nothing."

"Doug...give her one of those baby cookies with them. She can't just eat
carrot for dinner."

"Cookies? Where are they?"

"On top of the refrigerator. In the blue box."

"If I'd known we had those I wouldn't have been feeding them bits of bread
all this time."

"That would explain this..." Carol pointed to the collection of stale
breadcrumbs and bits of crust on the arm of the couch.

"Yeah, sometimes it's difficult to get them to keep their food in their
mouths."

"Messy eaters...that's another one of your traits they've inherited. Poor
girls. Poor Kate," she said, addressing the child on her lap who was sucking
a plastic spoon. Kate smiled, and took the spoon out of her mouth and pushed
it into Carol's.

"Hah! See, she knows you're insulting me," Doug said and Carol grimaced and
tried to move away from the drool-covered implement.



When Kate had come home, a week before Carol, Doug had discovered that
taking care of two infants, 24 hours a day, was much more difficult than
looking after one. For one thing, whenever one cried, the other would join
in. And while one would want feeding, another would need to be changed -
they always ensured the two demands were not compatible. Everyday tasks were
suddenly like major military procedures, involving huge bags of supplies,
specialised equipment just to carry them anywhere, vast quantities of toys,
bottles of baby formula, diapers...and if he wanted to go out anywhere on a
big trip and one of the twins needed changing, well it was a political
correctness nightmare. The changing rooms were always in the ladies'
bathrooms. And he didn't particularly want to change his daughters by the
urinals. So every trip had to be under an hour if possible. By the time they
were home again, not only did the twins need a nap, Doug did too. Everyday
when he visited Carol, he would ask her how she did it, and she would always
tell him that she wasn't sure she did. Parenting was not for the faint
hearted, they surmised.



Late that night, Doug rolled over in bed, and through the clouds and dreams
of sleep, realised that there was something not quite right. Fighting the
levels of sleep, he ascended to consciousness and looked up groggily. The
place beside him in the bed was empty, covers pushed back and a soft dent
where once a body had lain.
Rubbing his half-closed eyes with his hands, he turned over and sat up.
Looking across the room, he saw the silhouette by the window, holding onto a
pillow.

"Carol? Did one of the girls wake up?"

Startled, she turned around and shook her head. The moonlight from the
window reflected off her face and caught the surface of the thin streams of
water trickling down her cheeks. She turned to look out of the window again
as the El rumbled past, and Doug swung his legs out of the bed and walked
around to her. Standing behind Carol, he put his arms around her and looked
out of the window too.

"Are you okay? Is something hurting?"

"No, Doug, I'm fine. I'm really okay. I just...I just can't believe it." She
turned around in his arm to face him.

"I can't believe everything that's happened. I can't get over the fact that
you're here, despite everything. And the accident," more tears ran down her
face, "everything's just happening all at once!" She smiled a watery smile
and Doug smiled back, caressing her hair with one hand. He looked over the
top of her head briefly before looking back into her eyes.

"It's been a weird two weeks. But it's all going to be okay. You, the girls,
and me we're all going to be fine. C'mon, get back into bed."
He helped her back slowly, then got in himself and took Carol into his arms
again.



"You take two bodies and you twirl them into one,
They're hearts and they're bones,
And they won't come undone."


©Triggersaurus 2001