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Walking and reading was always a risky proposition, especially in hospitals where people moved both stealthily and unpredictably, but Emmy couldn’t help herself. The new People had a thumbnail picture of Alex in the corner and boasted an exclusive in bright yellow letters: On location in Australia with J. Alex Cook. Hannah would make fun of her, of course, but People was both a distraction and a stress relief. What wasn’t a distraction was the annoying slip-slap of her flip flops on the polished linoleum; she felt like she was announcing her presence ten rooms before the one she was looking for. A corner one, this time, just past the nurses’ station, tucked into a part of the building where the odd angles kept the sun from being too hot.
Well, that’s something, at least, she thought, slipping into the room and unloading her things ungracefully all over the tray table.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Hannah, who was frowning at Kathie Lee Gifford. “I couldn’t decide whether to bring you food in case they won’t let you eat it, and I figured you hadn’t seen the doctor yet. Unless you have seen the doctor? I tried to get here before rounds but I overslept and—”
Hannah just scowled at the Panera bag and the dripping condensation on Emmy’s iced chai. “I read once that the worst time to have a medical emergency is July, because interns,” she said. “If I die, I’m going to be really mad that you didn’t let me have chai.”
Emmy reached into the bag, pulling out a paper-wrapped pastry. “Orange scone, as requested.” Hannah made grabby hands, but Emmy put the scone back in the bag. “For after doctors, in case we’re having babies today.”
“We’re not having babies today.”
“Well, I thought maybe we were having babies last night in the kitchen while dinner was cooking, so.” Emmy had really thought no such thing. She’d been terrified that it was going to be like two times ago, when she’d thought she was losing Hannah and the baby, the time that she’d thought was the worst until the last time, when they’d known already that it was boy.
“We’re not having babies today,” Hannah insisted again. “I’m keeping them in as long as I can.”
Emmy pulled the slightly off-kilter arm chair recliner over closer to the bed and flopped down in it, kicked off her flip flops, and propped her feet up on the edge of the bed. “Hear that, babies?” she said to Hannah’s belly. “Mom wants you to stay in there. And your mom, she’s a tough lady. She likes it when people do what she says.”
“Here’s your boy,” Hannah said, un-muting the tv to a story about Alex arriving home in LA.
“He’s not my boy,” Emmy said. “I just like him.”
Hannah tapped a finger on the corner of People , which rested slightly askew on the tray table, on top of Hannah’s call buttons and Emmy’s sunglasses. “You’re to old to be a fangirl, Emmeline. Fourth Estate has been off the air for years already, it’s time for everyone to go back to their lives.”
Never mind , Emmy thought, that we wouldn’t even be together if it weren’t for a mutual love of the show.
Hannah had walked away from fandom after the show had ended, but Emmy still couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had friendships in the saner corners of Fourth’s fandom that she didn’t want to give up, so she’d maintained her fandom presence while everyone’s focus shifted away from the show and more towards whichever actors were their favorites. For Emmy, that had been J. Alex Cook.
They were alike in a way, she liked to think. She had also grown up queer in a small town with a less than functioning extended family, and she had been saved many times over by the power of media. She loved that Alex had been involved in fandom himself, forever ago. She didn’t hold any aspirations toward celebrity, she just wanted to be happy in her life with Hannah and her classroom of Head Start kids and the Fourth fanfic she still wrote from time to time. She poked her toes into other fandoms, testing the waters of personalities and dynamics, and she had followed some friends along to Paul’s Winsome, AZ , but nothing had quite filled the space Fourth’s ending had left in her creative and fandom worlds. Emmy didn’t worry too much about it, though; she knew from growing up a child who was practically born to be in fandom that the next thing would always be there, churning up feelings and ideas and that insatiable need to create content about it.
“It’s good he’s home,” Emmy said once show had gone to commercial. “Paul sort of sucks at being alone.”
“I thought you weren’t into RPF.”
“I’m not.” Not really , she thought but didn’t say. Hannah’s ideas about appropriate fan conduct didn’t extend to RPF, but Emmy enjoyed it sometimes. Not the crazy Alex and Liam ones, which were still somehow a thing even though Liam was married. She enjoyed the occasional domestic fluff things that surfaced every time pictures of the inside of Paul and Alex’s house hit the internet. Break the internet, more like.
“Then why do you even know about what Paul and Alex’s relationship is like?”
“It’s pretty well documented,” Emmy said, keying the passcode on her tablet. “Paul does stupid shit when Alex is gone.”
“Well documented where?”
Emmy gave Hannah a withering look.
“Right,” Hannah said. “Tumblr. Of course. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, hon.”
“Says the woman who thinks she’s going to die because July and interns.”
“I was teasing!”
“Liar.”
“I was mostly teasing.”
“Uh huh.” Emmy flicked through her notifications; ten more had come in since she’d last checked sitting in the drive-through at Panera. Instead of replying individually she opened a new text box. Crisis averted for the time being. The Little Nuggets are still baking. My Girl is pretty grumpy, but determined to keep them where they belong for as long as she can. I took today off work because oh my god, I didn’t get home from the ER until after 2 am and then I couldn’t sleep. So I’m camped out here at the hospital today, hoping to talk to the docs and find out what we do now.
Thanks, y’all, for all your support last night.
Someone alleviate my stress by talking at me about whether Australia was good for Alex or terrible. I couldn’t tell from the Today story, and I haven’t had a chance to read People yet. Anyone? Anyone?
There were a lot of things Emmy liked about having friends online from all over the world. Mostly she enjoyed glimpses at other cultures and food and customs. But the best part about international friends, and the internet in general, was that there was always someone awake in the dark, always someone there when you needed them.