SkyGirl5
Cadet
Chapter 14
After we returned from Chicago, Sydney and I slid into a smooth even pattern in our lives. We were happy and discussing our wedding plans only made us happier. We began organizing the house so that it wasn’t so much like us livin’ in my mama’s house anymore, but like it was us livin’ in our house. The first thing we did was get rid of my mama’s broken mattress and move the one we had been using into the master bedroom, which had much more room. We organized our clothing in the closet and dresser in there, making sure everything was perfectly neat and tidy, or rather, Sydney did that, I just hung things wherever and then she fixed them to her liking.
We also bought some new porch furniture because Sydney insisted that the existing furniture looked as though it wouldn’t withstand another day before it collapsed entirely. We didn’t spend too much, though, for we still had hospital bills looming over us.
During the third week in September, Dr. Jamison called us and invited us to attend a medical conference with him because, apparently, the paper he had written on Sydney’s medical miracle case had won him top honors. Unfortunately for us, being a medical miracle didn’t help pay the bills, but it did get some special research grant in Sydney’s name donated to the Birmingham hospital where her surgery had been performed. We attended the conference with him (hey, it was a free trip to New York City, which, I found out was similar to Chicago in the respect that I didn’t want to live there) and he was amused to find that we were engaged. Amused, but not surprised, because, apparently we continued his little theory. His theory being that in tragic life-or-death cases such as Sydney’s either one of two things happen: the ill person’s significant other bolted immediately, never to be heard from again, or those two people never separated again. I guess he was right.
In early October, Sydney returned to work after giving me pitiful looks for practically two weeks for I had to take another writing job, which I did out of fear that we’d still be paying off our fifty-five thousand dollar loan when we were old and grey. She took a job managing a bank twenty minutes away. It was a good job, but for Sydney, it came with great stress and anxiety since she had been entirely removed from her comfort zone and was surrounded by total strangers. Her added stress level had me incredibly worried, but after a few weeks she actually seemed to be enjoying her job, which was good.
Almost immediately after we returned from Chicago and fell into the wonderfulness that our lives together had become, I stopped comparing Sydney to her former self. I didn’t do this consciously either, it just sort of happened. I loved who Sydney was then and, though she was still slightly different, in a way she wasn’t. She was still the brown haired, brown eyed, dimpled smile woman that I fell in love with that summer and would continue to love my whole life long.
I still thought about the ‘old’ Sydney, but in an entirely different way. I thought about her and I missed her just like I missed my mama and the others who have gone from my life. Mostly this happened when I was out in the garden, their garden. I’d watch the petals sway in the wind and it would remind me about Sydney’s practically overzealous excitement she had about the garden when she first started fixing it. I saw her, the old Sydney, in those flowers, so bright and happy and almost giggling all the time. Missing her that way made me a little sad, but then, all I had to do, was go back inside and hold tightly to the Sydney that I still had and remember that she wasn’t really gone after all.
Sydney and I were married in November of that year and our wedding turned out much different than we had originally planned it to be. Sydney wished to be married in the church she had attended with her mama during her childhood before her mama passed. I had no protest to this; after all, I just wanted to marry her I didn’t care where, when or how. We figured that there was no way to selectively invite people from our town; it simply wasn’t possible and we wanted a small wedding so we decided to simply invite no one and see how that went for us.
Yeah, that went real well let me tell you. First, there was May Weston constantly nosing her way into all the details especially once she heard from the mailman that Sydney had a delivery from Diane’s Bridal Boutique. Then, there was Amy Montgomery, who would sing at Sydney and I everywhere we went, tryin’ to get us to agree to lettin’ her sing at the wedding. Not to mention the fact that we were two people from the town getting married to each other in the town, so we were already everyone’s favorite gossip subject. Add to that the fact that we all had a special place in their hearts because of Sydney’s tumor and… well, we were downright screwed.
In the end, the entire town attended out wedding, but I didn’t really notice that much. I couldn’t take my eyes off my new bride and how unbelievably fantastic she looked in her wedding gown. She had never looked more beautiful in her life, or so I thought and I found that particularly amusing since she had been so worried that she wouldn’t look ‘right’ because the part of her hair that had been shaved was about an inch or so long and looked, in her words, ‘messed up’. She looked perfect, though, absolutely perfect and everyone thought so.
After we were married we were completely and utterly blissful honeymooners for months after our honeymoon, which was only a weekend long because Sydney couldn’t get away from her job for too long. She promised, though, that once she was more settled in her job we’d go on a real honeymoon and we did. For her twenty-eighth birthday the next year we went down to one of Florida’s beaches and it was perfectly wonderful relaxing on the sand with Sydney in a bright pink bikini.
Our first year of marriage was utter bliss and, though Sydney was still rather quiet, I didn’t even notice it anymore, until one day shortly after Valentine’s Day when I came home from Dobson’s to find Sydney with a grin larger than I had ever seen before stretched across her face, lighting up our entire kitchen.
“What’s… going on…?” I asked, my tone suspicious as I set the groceries down
She practically hopped over to me and pulled me into a kiss so passionate I was afraid my clothes would shed themselves. When, she pulled back I couldn’t even speak, but, little did I know I was about to be rendered speechless for an entirely different reason. “I’m pregnant!” she squeaked before jumping up and hugging me tightly.
I think it was a full minute before I managed to croak, “What? P-pregnant? REALLY?!”
“YES!” she squealed. She kissed me again before she started dancing around the kitchen. “This is so exciting we’re going to have a baby!! Isn’t that wonderful!? What do you want? A boy? A girl? I can’t decide what I want!! I want them both – but not twins, I don’t know if I cold handle that but eventually I want both. I want three!! Two boys and a girl or two girls and a boy I don’t really care as long as we get one of each... Michael, why aren’t you saying anything? Aren’t you excited?”
“What? Yes of course I’m… thrilled,” I managed in a disbelieving tone. All I could do was stand there and watch her chatter on about baby clothes that were adorable and a name book that she wanted to buy and everything. I was in utter awe. There she was, my Sydney, both old and new combined. She was talking and laughing and smiling like I hadn’t seen since the summer before her surgery and I…I just watched her, never having loved her more.
Epilogue
Watching Sydney in the kitchen, I wasn’t sure what I thought. I didn’t exactly think that magically she would go back to ‘old’ Sydney, which was good because, if I had, I might have been disappointed. Her ‘old’ Sydney-like behavior was very short lived, though all throughout her first pregnancy Sydney did have a certain glow and happiness about her reminiscent of how she was before her surgery.
The thing that I loved the most, though, was that with our children, Grace, Alex and Laura, she seemed to be her real, true self. I don’t think I ever saw her look at one of them without her dimpled grin appearing and she’d sing to them and she’d laugh with them and she’d love them, just like I loved them, just like I loved her.
thanks for reading everyone! and, of course, thanks to the betas
new fic tomorrow - Listen with Your Heart
After we returned from Chicago, Sydney and I slid into a smooth even pattern in our lives. We were happy and discussing our wedding plans only made us happier. We began organizing the house so that it wasn’t so much like us livin’ in my mama’s house anymore, but like it was us livin’ in our house. The first thing we did was get rid of my mama’s broken mattress and move the one we had been using into the master bedroom, which had much more room. We organized our clothing in the closet and dresser in there, making sure everything was perfectly neat and tidy, or rather, Sydney did that, I just hung things wherever and then she fixed them to her liking.
We also bought some new porch furniture because Sydney insisted that the existing furniture looked as though it wouldn’t withstand another day before it collapsed entirely. We didn’t spend too much, though, for we still had hospital bills looming over us.
During the third week in September, Dr. Jamison called us and invited us to attend a medical conference with him because, apparently, the paper he had written on Sydney’s medical miracle case had won him top honors. Unfortunately for us, being a medical miracle didn’t help pay the bills, but it did get some special research grant in Sydney’s name donated to the Birmingham hospital where her surgery had been performed. We attended the conference with him (hey, it was a free trip to New York City, which, I found out was similar to Chicago in the respect that I didn’t want to live there) and he was amused to find that we were engaged. Amused, but not surprised, because, apparently we continued his little theory. His theory being that in tragic life-or-death cases such as Sydney’s either one of two things happen: the ill person’s significant other bolted immediately, never to be heard from again, or those two people never separated again. I guess he was right.
In early October, Sydney returned to work after giving me pitiful looks for practically two weeks for I had to take another writing job, which I did out of fear that we’d still be paying off our fifty-five thousand dollar loan when we were old and grey. She took a job managing a bank twenty minutes away. It was a good job, but for Sydney, it came with great stress and anxiety since she had been entirely removed from her comfort zone and was surrounded by total strangers. Her added stress level had me incredibly worried, but after a few weeks she actually seemed to be enjoying her job, which was good.
Almost immediately after we returned from Chicago and fell into the wonderfulness that our lives together had become, I stopped comparing Sydney to her former self. I didn’t do this consciously either, it just sort of happened. I loved who Sydney was then and, though she was still slightly different, in a way she wasn’t. She was still the brown haired, brown eyed, dimpled smile woman that I fell in love with that summer and would continue to love my whole life long.
I still thought about the ‘old’ Sydney, but in an entirely different way. I thought about her and I missed her just like I missed my mama and the others who have gone from my life. Mostly this happened when I was out in the garden, their garden. I’d watch the petals sway in the wind and it would remind me about Sydney’s practically overzealous excitement she had about the garden when she first started fixing it. I saw her, the old Sydney, in those flowers, so bright and happy and almost giggling all the time. Missing her that way made me a little sad, but then, all I had to do, was go back inside and hold tightly to the Sydney that I still had and remember that she wasn’t really gone after all.
Sydney and I were married in November of that year and our wedding turned out much different than we had originally planned it to be. Sydney wished to be married in the church she had attended with her mama during her childhood before her mama passed. I had no protest to this; after all, I just wanted to marry her I didn’t care where, when or how. We figured that there was no way to selectively invite people from our town; it simply wasn’t possible and we wanted a small wedding so we decided to simply invite no one and see how that went for us.
Yeah, that went real well let me tell you. First, there was May Weston constantly nosing her way into all the details especially once she heard from the mailman that Sydney had a delivery from Diane’s Bridal Boutique. Then, there was Amy Montgomery, who would sing at Sydney and I everywhere we went, tryin’ to get us to agree to lettin’ her sing at the wedding. Not to mention the fact that we were two people from the town getting married to each other in the town, so we were already everyone’s favorite gossip subject. Add to that the fact that we all had a special place in their hearts because of Sydney’s tumor and… well, we were downright screwed.
In the end, the entire town attended out wedding, but I didn’t really notice that much. I couldn’t take my eyes off my new bride and how unbelievably fantastic she looked in her wedding gown. She had never looked more beautiful in her life, or so I thought and I found that particularly amusing since she had been so worried that she wouldn’t look ‘right’ because the part of her hair that had been shaved was about an inch or so long and looked, in her words, ‘messed up’. She looked perfect, though, absolutely perfect and everyone thought so.
After we were married we were completely and utterly blissful honeymooners for months after our honeymoon, which was only a weekend long because Sydney couldn’t get away from her job for too long. She promised, though, that once she was more settled in her job we’d go on a real honeymoon and we did. For her twenty-eighth birthday the next year we went down to one of Florida’s beaches and it was perfectly wonderful relaxing on the sand with Sydney in a bright pink bikini.
Our first year of marriage was utter bliss and, though Sydney was still rather quiet, I didn’t even notice it anymore, until one day shortly after Valentine’s Day when I came home from Dobson’s to find Sydney with a grin larger than I had ever seen before stretched across her face, lighting up our entire kitchen.
“What’s… going on…?” I asked, my tone suspicious as I set the groceries down
She practically hopped over to me and pulled me into a kiss so passionate I was afraid my clothes would shed themselves. When, she pulled back I couldn’t even speak, but, little did I know I was about to be rendered speechless for an entirely different reason. “I’m pregnant!” she squeaked before jumping up and hugging me tightly.
I think it was a full minute before I managed to croak, “What? P-pregnant? REALLY?!”
“YES!” she squealed. She kissed me again before she started dancing around the kitchen. “This is so exciting we’re going to have a baby!! Isn’t that wonderful!? What do you want? A boy? A girl? I can’t decide what I want!! I want them both – but not twins, I don’t know if I cold handle that but eventually I want both. I want three!! Two boys and a girl or two girls and a boy I don’t really care as long as we get one of each... Michael, why aren’t you saying anything? Aren’t you excited?”
“What? Yes of course I’m… thrilled,” I managed in a disbelieving tone. All I could do was stand there and watch her chatter on about baby clothes that were adorable and a name book that she wanted to buy and everything. I was in utter awe. There she was, my Sydney, both old and new combined. She was talking and laughing and smiling like I hadn’t seen since the summer before her surgery and I…I just watched her, never having loved her more.
Epilogue
Watching Sydney in the kitchen, I wasn’t sure what I thought. I didn’t exactly think that magically she would go back to ‘old’ Sydney, which was good because, if I had, I might have been disappointed. Her ‘old’ Sydney-like behavior was very short lived, though all throughout her first pregnancy Sydney did have a certain glow and happiness about her reminiscent of how she was before her surgery.
The thing that I loved the most, though, was that with our children, Grace, Alex and Laura, she seemed to be her real, true self. I don’t think I ever saw her look at one of them without her dimpled grin appearing and she’d sing to them and she’d laugh with them and she’d love them, just like I loved them, just like I loved her.
thanks for reading everyone! and, of course, thanks to the betas
new fic tomorrow - Listen with Your Heart
only... urgh... I need to have a serious talk with you someday -_-