Re: Visiting the Hospital
Cris was certainly right about Daniel's nearly nonexistent opinion of Joey's parentage. Daniel was more concerned about Sam then he was almost anything else, and no one would be able to say that Sam wasn't the child's mother, so Daniel was satisfied enough unless she told him she needed him to--anything at all, really. Buy a custody lawyer for Cris? Accidentally on purpose murder Neil? Daniel didn't think about it. Neil wasn't here, and the lazy, unresponsive idiot wouldn't show up on his own, without someone shoving him all the way. Perhaps Daniel might even do it for Cris, if he was convinced it was best for Sam, and maybe even because he liked Cris, most of the time. Besides, in Daniel's mind mind parents wanting to keep their children was not as much of a problem as them giving them away like they were inconvenient puppies. Out of date ideas. Some of them stayed, though. Daniel's parents, the ones he remembered, technically his grandparents, had talked about him being too dark and his parentage, as if it was a thing he could hide. It was a fact of life, that judgment. The number of people who were concerned for this child was far more than average, in Daniel's experience. She would be fine, if she lived.
Daniel gave Sam a speaking glance, obviously reluctant to leave her, but some of that concern eased when Iris volunteered to stay. Sam would not be alone, and Daniel really did want to see the baby. That worry eased, he looked away from her toward the doors from which the new parents had come. More unwelcoming strangeness, and deeper in the hospital still. Daniel was more confident of his sanity around infants, tiny, nonthreatening things of moderately alien origin, but getting there was obviously a daunting idea. Daniel had looked around for the cat that didn't exist, but it wasn't there. He caught Louis looking at him, and realized he must be jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Daniel pressed his mouth together and stood up. He didn't say anything, but he moved into Louis' shadow, making himself a little smaller and avoiding the swinging bag Cris had handed back to Louis before they departed.
He glanced back at Sam once to make sure she wasn't breaking into sobs before they moved in Cris' wake, and the long hallways began.