OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

seventy-three.

APRIL 8th, 1992, SEATTLE WA

         AS REAGAN WALKED through the familiar front door of her and Dave's apartment, she felt like she was stepping through an invisible veil, one that's presence had everything to due with the bundle of blankets shrouding Gracie in her arms.

She hesitated at the doorstep, surveying the surroundings of her home. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen the place in ages. Her and Dave had been there the evening prior, if only for several hours. Within the last month, they had lived duplicately between the hospital and the apartment, never separated too long from Gracie as she recuperated from her early birth in the NICU. It had been harrowing when Reagan's doctor had released her a month prior, but not Gracie.

"She needs time," the doctor had explained gently to a horrified Reagan, who had known that this had been coming, but was stupidly trying to deny it. "She has to reach certain milestones here before you can take her home."

The last month had been awful. Maybe not for Reagan's family and friends, who had all simply basked in the relief that Gracie was in the world and well, but she had not felt the same. While she was ever-grateful that Gracie would be alright, there had been a lonesome melancholy when she'd returned home from the hospital with Dave and sans-Gracie. It was a far different reality than the one she had pictured while pregnant.

The month had dragged by agonizingly slow, taunting Reagan with each day that dawdled on. Since she was on leave from work, she had spent nearly every second of her free time back at the hospital, content to watch Gracie and sometimes hold her, experiencing the first trials of motherhood with watching nurses nearby. That part had been hard — she had almost lost her patience and snapped at one of the nurses when the woman had hovered, doling out instructions as Reagan changed Gracie's diaper.

"I hate it," she had spat through gritted teeth at Dave as they'd driven home one night under the gloom of inky nightfall and rain. "It feels like she's not even ours. We can't even touch her without someone right there telling us how to do it."

"Reags, c'mon. She's ours," Dave had reasoned, shrugging with one hand dangling over the steering wheel. "They're just trying to help. It's not like we know anything about preemies."

"I know how to hold my daughter!" Reagan had seethed angrily.

"Shit. You're taking the term 'mama bear' to a whole new level."

If it hadn't been for the support system that had wrapped itself around Reagan and Dave, she didn't think she would have been able to reign in her anger over the situation. She had never thought of herself as the type to lean on others, especially considering the bullshit that she had shouldered through alone throughout her whole life, but Reagan and Dave's families had truly come through for them.

Ginny namely had been a saint, doting on her son and daughter-in-law in the absence of her newly arrived granddaughter. She and Lisa had made it safely to Seattle shortly after Gracie's birth and had stayed in the living room of Reagan and Dave's apartment, laughing blithely every time Reagan had insisted that they take the bed instead of the lumpy, blown-up air mattress dominating the room.

"Reagan, honey, you just gave birth. Sleep in your bed. Lisa and I are fine."

"And I am not sleeping in your bed," Lisa had said under her breath with an eye roll. "I have no desire to sleep in my brother's coital spaces."

"Well, you better think twice about crashing on the living room floor then," Dave had shot back, picking up on Lisa's jab and smirking in a way that only brothers can manage when irritating their sisters.

The one-bedroom apartment had become significantly more cramped with four people inside of it, especially with Reagan's dismantled drum set taking up a wide berth of the living room space, but Reagan didn't mind. It was something that ordinarily might have grated her nerves, but she loved Dave's family and needed them as that anxious month drew past. Ginny and Lisa had taken good care of her, whipping up dinners and doing her laundry as if they were housekeepers. There had even been nights when Reagan, under the weight of exhaustion from spending long days at the hospital, had collapsed onto the living room couch and allowed Ginny to stroke her hair gently. Those moments had brought a twinge of regret to her heart, as she sometimes wished that her own mother was capable of doing such a thing for her.