by Aiden Bates
"So you're clearing him for light duty again?" Mal's face was neutral, professional.
"Very light. It's these SEALS, you understand, and of course he's an alpha. They're good men, the best, but you can't just tell them 'have at it, but take care of yourself.'" He made a face. "No, they rush everything, and the next thing you know their insides are on the outside again and they're complaining about it to everyone who'll listen."
Mal smirked. "Don't I know it. I'll make sure his commanders are aware of his orders and that he's closely supervised."
Trent had been about to complain about the stereotype. He certainly didn't think of himself as being all that macho. But the prospect of "close supervision" had some appeal for him.
They celebrated Christmas with Uncle Jonas and Uncle Nick, along with Cousin Dave and his family. Dave's kids seemed to fall in love with Mal right away, and Mal got a kick out of reading to them and playing with all of their new toys.
After the New Year, Trent went back to work. He couldn't do the full regimen, but he could start workouts again. At first it felt terrible. He'd been a slug for months. With time, effort, and determination, though, he fell back into his old habits.
As Trent regained his old form, Mal got bigger and bigger. Nick helped him find a local obstetrician who could care for omegas, so that was easy enough to take care of. Mal was still nervous, but they both knew that was a holdover.
Morna showed up at the beginning of February. Chief brought her around. She wore fatigues and threw her arms around her brother as soon as he opened the door. Chief stood in the background, beaming.
Trent watched the happy reunion. Then he watched as Morna hauled off and punched Mal in the arm. "You went off and left me with Da on the way, you bastard!" she yelled. "And then you sent an email!"
She hugged him again.
Mal hustled Morna and Chief into the condo. Trent fixed coffee for everyone, while Mal eased himself into a seat. He wasn't standing for long periods anymore, and Trent thought that was probably for the best. "So you're here, and you've made it through basic," Trent said. "How'd you do?"
Morna scoffed, and Chief waved a hand. "It was a breeze for her. She's been recommended for flight school, actually. I think she'll do just fine."
Mal stared at his sister for a long moment, and then he grinned. "Of course she will! She's fantastic. And she's smart, strong, and ruthless. Why wouldn't she do fine?" He accepted his coffee. "The Great Lakes must be bitter cold this time of year, though."
"Oh, you have no idea." Morna shuddered. "Remember that time we were stuck in Murmansk in January?"
Mal shuddered. "I thought I was going to lose something important, I did." He rubbed his hands together as though he could still feel the cold. "Da was so mad I refused to learn Russian after that. He was."
"Made me learn it instead." Morna stuck her tongue out at him. "It's stood me in good stead, I don't mind pointing out."
Morna would have to go to OCS first, which would take a bit of doing, but she had friends in the right places. She would stay with them for a few days and then head off to Newport, Rhode Island, to start on the next phase of her career. They spent a few delightful days with her, and then they bid her a tearful goodbye.
Mal went into labor in early March. This was quite a bit earlier than he expected, but when they got to Portsmouth his doctor assured him it wasn't a big deal. "Most first pregnancies go late, but some babies like to get in ahead of the game. You're past the point of danger. Just relax, and try to let things happen naturally."
Mal lay in his bed in the labor and delivery room for hours. He didn't scream, not once, but Trent could see how much pain he was in. He finally summoned the doctor. "Something's wrong, Doc. I can see his belly heaving, I can feel him straining, but nothing's happening."
The doctor checked Mal's nether regions, and he grimaced. "I was a little worried about this. Mal, can you hear me right now?"
Mal glared at him.
"Mal, your birth canal hasn't formed. I'm going to have to move to a surgical delivery. Do I have your consent?"
Mal glared again, and then he nodded. He was in too much pain to talk, but he could gesture.
Mal had wanted to avoid drugs, not out of any bizarre sense of virtue, but because he still had some kind of fear about his father showing up and didn't want to be at a disadvantage. Now he had to get a spinal block. Trent could see the defeat in his eyes.
He bent down to kiss Mal's lips. "It's going to be okay." He winked. "I'm carrying."
Mal huffed out a painful laugh. "Americans."
Their son, Daniel John Kelly, was born less than an hour later. He was a little on the small side at six pounds, but that was only to be expected from such an early baby. He had all of his fingers and toes. He had a perfect button nose from which Trent simply could not look away and beautiful fuzzy gray eyes. His hair was thick, and it was bright red just like his aunt's.
Mal had to stay in the hospital five days. Normally, men stayed in for four days after a C-section, but the doctors wanted to keep Mal an extra day because of all of his internal bleeding. They had a process to help him with that, but they needed to make sure there were no side effects from it.
At the end of the five days, Trent drove Mal home.
It was hard at first. They loved baby Danny, but love does not cover a multitude of sins when a person is waking up every hour to feed a newborn. Sleep deprived people are not always kind. They tried to work out a schedule, so one got up between certain hours to take care of Screamy Dan while the other one slept, but in a small condo with thin walls, that only went so far.
They made it through, though. No matter how much screaming Danny did, a cuddle almost always calmed him down. And he seemed to figure out pretty quickly that the way to his parents' heart was to grab onto one of their fingers and hold on like his life depended on it.
Trent built his body back up, and he was deployed four weeks after Danny was born. Mal had known it was likely, and he and Danny came to see Trent and the rest of the crew off. Trent still felt like a jerk. How was he supposed to call himself a father if he left his fiance alone, in a strange country, with nothing to do but listen to a screaming baby?
His deployment took him to Libya, where they hunted down an ISIS cell that had nothing at all to do with White Dawn. It was kind of refreshing. All of the intel they had was good, they took no casualties, and managed to completely eliminate the cell they'd aimed for. It took them three months, but it was a good old-fashioned deployment and Trent almost felt clean again when they headed back across the Mediterranean.
When he got back, Virginia was hot again. He'd known Mal for a full year now, and their son was four months old. Mal met him at the base, but he didn't look like he had when Trent had left.
All of the baby weight was gone. He was wearing baby Dan in a carrier, and his handsome body was hidden in a set of hospital scrubs. A hospital ID had been clipped to the hem of his shirt.
Mal grinned when Trent bounded down the bus stairs to see him. "What's this?"
"Apparently there was already a job waiting for me here. I just couldn't step into it until Dan was born. I'm working at US Navy Medical Center Portsmouth now. I'm in the Emergency Department, just like I was in France. It's a bit different than it was there, but I'm still doing good work. I like it."
Danny kicked his feet and held out his hands. "It's like he remembers me," Trent marveled. He took Danny out of the carrier and into his arms.
"He should. I've been showing him your picture and telling him about you every night." Mal laughed and rested his head on Trent's chest. "I'm glad you've come home, Trent. I've missed you."
Trent kissed the top of Mal's head. Mal wouldn’t take that. He took Trent’s mouth with his own and claimed it. Trent gave himself over fully to the kiss. He’d truly come home.
Preview Chapter: Sealed Together
Nick yawned and pulled into the parking lot. He wasn't entirely sure what he thought about Virginia
yet. Everything in their house was still in boxes, so he couldn't say for sure what he thought about the house or the neighborhood. He knew he was finally making real money. He knew the Portsmouth job was a government job, which meant kick-ass benefits and real job security.
Those would have to do.
He walked into the entrance and looked at the directory. Sure there were nice volunteers who would direct him, but he was barely human before coffee. He didn't want to risk insulting someone or something like that. Besides, if he couldn't read the directions to Personnel for himself, he'd be in a pretty sorry state, wouldn't he?
There was already someone else standing at the directory, scanning for something. The guy was on the tall side, with wild red hair, and a well-trimmed beard. He didn't jump or flinch when he saw Nick, but he did give Nick a searching look. Was he checking for something? Huh. Well, paranoid people showed up everywhere. "You here for new employee orientation too?" the man asked. He had an accent. If Nick had to guess, he was probably Irish.
Nick nodded. "Yeah. It's my first day. I just got hired as a nurse in the ER."
The Irish guy laughed. "They must churn them up and spit them out here. I'm here for the same thing." He held out a hand. "I'm Mal Kelly."
Nick relaxed, just a little bit. Was it him, or did this guy seem a little bit too friendly? It wasn't something he was used to. "Nick Kosloski. Pleased to meet you. Should we find our way up together?"
Mal agreed, and they headed up in a rickety old elevator toward the administration area. "They say this is a historic building." Mal grimaced and looked at the elevator. "The elevator's historic, at least."
Nick snorted. "I'm sure it doesn't seem historic to you, where you're from. I'm from Nebraska. Everything in Virginia seems older than Nebraska."
Mal snickered. "Well, yeah, I guess these things are relative. I'm still getting used to things, I suppose." The elevator stopped, and he stepped out. "In Europe, we don't know much about America except what we see in the news or film. I was absolutely convinced that America was controlled by roaming militias that looked like something out of Mad Max — rolling porcupines of armament."
Nick laughed at that. "So why would you come if we sounded so lawless?"
Mal shrugged. "I got pregnant. The father was a SEAL, and so here I am. I'm learning to like it here, though." He spread his hands. "For one thing, I get to learn a lesson about believing a news clip shows the whole story about a place, yeah?"
Something in Nick's belly twisted. Mal got to come to America to be with the father of his child. Nick hadn't gotten anything but shame, ridicule, and struggle — but hey. He'd started out in America. He guessed they were kind of even. "Were you a nurse in Ireland?"
Mal smirked. "France, actually. It's a nice place to work. I worked at the naval base at Toulon, in their emergency department, so this will be familiar at least." He opened the door for Nick. "After you."
Mal and Nick were civilian employees. The people running Personnel were not. They handed them clipboards and directed them to a room with crisp efficiency, and both men got to work filling out forms.
Plenty of other people were filling out forms, too. Most of them were women. Nick had gotten used to it.
Once the forms were complete, the crew found themselves ushered into an auditorium. A woman in fatigues stood up at the podium and identified herself as the chief medical corpsman for this facility. She gave them all a talk about expectations of civilian employees. Portsmouth served military members, veterans, and their families throughout the area. Given the proximity of Portsmouth to a major naval base and to the SEAL facility in Virginia Beach, that meant a lot of Navy personnel. They got quite a few patients from other branches, too, and they were not to discriminate.
She spoke about the building and about the facility's history. She spoke about the chain of command and about the unique demands that would be placed on them. "I know you're up to it, because we hired you. I know you won't let us down."
And that was it.
They were dismissed to their respective departments. Mal and Nick made their way down to Emergency, where a supervisor named Jenny gave them a tour and told them to get changed. They would be closely monitored for the first couple of weeks, while they adjusted to hospital policies and procedures. This would be especially true for Mal, whose work experience was all foreign.
"That's not to shame you," she told him. "I came here from Korea, and they kept a close eye on me, too. Some things take a little getting used to — especially giving some responses in English." She winked at him.
Then they were turned loose on the patients.
Most of the patients Nick dealt with were ambulatory. That was what he was used to anyway. He dealt with the people who came in because of comparatively minor accidents or because of illnesses. They'd brought themselves in or their families had brought them in. They weren't critical care patients, or at least they usually didn't think they were.
They had a few cases of food poisoning. It was early July, time for cookouts and barbecues, and those always came with hazards. Listeria did not care that you fought at Iwo Jima. E. Coli had no interest in your valor during Vietnam, and frankly if Nick never saw another Special Forces serviceman who thought he was too tough to need to clean his cooking implements thoroughly, it would be too soon.
He kept his thoughts and his judgement to himself, though. What did he know about what went on at home? Maybe they'd gone over to someone else's house and hadn't known about the cleanliness of their knives. He prepped the IV lines and kept them hydrated all the same.
They got burns, too. Kids touched hot grills, stoves, or campfires. It was easier for Nick to hold judgement here. How his own son had made it to ten, he had no idea. Kids got away from you, even when you watched them like a hawk. It was inevitable. Sure there were cases of abuse, but most of the time kids just did stuff.
Adults got burned too. The biggest culprit there was fireworks. These jobs were harder, because the burns tended to be bad and were often contaminated.
Nick's day went by in a flash, and before he knew it he was ready to go pick up his son from the camp bus.
Sammy loved his first day at camp. He'd made some friends already, and to hear him tell it he'd spent the whole time climbing up a trees like a monkey. Nick couldn't help but smile as he drove them home to Portsmouth.
The house wasn't great, but Nick could afford it. That was what mattered. It was theirs, and maybe the schools weren't so hot but they'd do for now. Once Nick saved up a little bit of money, they'd be able to move somewhere with better schools. And eventually Sammy could go to college, and he'd get a job someplace awesome. Someplace that would let him use his natural engineering talents, just like his dad.
Not that his dad would know, or care, but whatever.
Sammy was exhausted from his first day at camp. He went to bed early, and Nick took the time to do some unpacking. He worked in the kitchen, because that was the easiest. When he couldn't do any more, he went to bed. He slept like the dead until his alarm went off and woke up to do it all over again.
Work was always busy, but that was best. Nick wouldn't have wanted to work someplace with a lot of downtime. Downtime inevitably led to layoffs. Nick had been there and done that. That was one of the reasons he'd eventually gone into nursing. He wanted a career with more security than anything else available to a single omega parent. Sure, layoffs happened, but someone was always looking to hire nurses somewhere.
Most of the other nurses were nice enough, but the folks who'd started at about the same time tended to stick together. It just made sense. Everyone was going through the same things and trying to navigate the same waters. No one had anything closer to the same experiences than Mal, and Nick found himself gravitating closer and closer to the Irish nurse.
Mal didn't tend to get assigned to the same cases as Nick. Mal apparently had both military and critical care experience. He'd even done some medical flight work, or so one of the other nurses told
him. Mal got stuck on the hard cases. Mal took the ambulance cases. Mal took the med flight cases. Mal took the guys who came in with gunshot wounds or mangled from car wrecks. Mal got the guys from training accidents.
He was still the only other omega on their shift. He didn't seem to be bothered by the difference in cases they worked, either. "It's still work," he said, when Nick asked him about it. "And honestly, considering what I used to do, I'm probably better suited to it. My Da was one of those ultra-macho tough guys. I wouldn't have been allowed to go to hospital for something like food poisoning. I didn't think I was allowed to go to hospital to have a baby, for crying out loud."
"That's nuts." Nick didn't bother sugar coating it. Nurses rarely did that anyway.
"Well, I know that now." Mal smirked. "Anyway, I'm more comfortable in the thick of the other sort of thing."
