That Blue Gibson: Another Round

twenty

"How is she?"

"Well hello to you, too!"

Dave scrubbed his hand down his face and sighed in annoyance, spitting back a sarcastic reply. "Hi, Hawkins. How are you? Having a lovely vacation?"

"Don't get snippy with me, man," Taylor snapped back. "She's fine. Napping."

"Still?"

"Again."

"Are you fucking drugging her?" Dave dropped his head the second he said the words, regretting them immediately before adding a rueful, "Sorry." A long pause followed in which Dave checked his screen to make sure Taylor hadn't hung up on him. 

"You done, man?" Taylor finally muttered. "Got it all out of your system?"

Dave rolled his eyes and shoved himself off the couch, the last bits of his pride preventing him from answering the question. "How are the kids?"

He listened to Taylor rattle off all the fun the kids were having at the beach as he stalked through the halls of 606 towards the warehouse. Josh was there somewhere as well, he hadn't left Dave's side in almost two weeks.

"... they're asking about you, though," Taylor finally finished just as the heavy fire proof door slammed shut behind Dave. 

"I can be there in three hours, Hawkins. Just waiting for permission," he wasn't able to say the last few words without the irritation in his voice, but his patience was gone. Long gone. 

Leaving for Oregon went on as planned, with only a few differences. First, Liz had gone directly to the airport from the hospital, insisting she had everything she needed at the beach house so there was no need to pack. Second, Dave's spot on the plane had been filled by Taylor, which had been difficult to explain to the kids but the addition of Shane, Annabelle and Everleigh to the crew along with Dave and Allison's promise to meet up with them later in the week appeased them enough to get them on the plane with smiles on their faces. 

"Couple days, Disco. She'll be ready then."

"You said that two days ago," he muttered as he knelt in front of a large stack of drum equipment. 

"Did I?"

"Don't fuck with me, Hawkins," he was deadly serious now, he had been teetering on the edge of a meltdown for days. "Has she had any more contractions?"

"One or two this morning," Taylor admitted quietly. "Her blood pressure looks good through."

The thought of Taylor gently waking Liz every few hours to strap a monitor to her arm felt like a knife in his chest. They probably whispered to each other through the dark while waiting for the machine to read, while he gently held her arm to put on and take off the cuff. Dave could just hear her quiet, 'Thank you, T,' as she rolled over in that big bed and went back to sleep. And that would happen several times a night. Taylor would slip into her room to work the machine and record the numbers, then sneak back to his own room without waking anyone else. Unless they cut out a few steps and decided to just sleep in the same bed...

He tried to clear the downward spiral of thoughts from his head while managing a tight, "Good."

"Yeah. What are you doing? I heard the warehouse door slam."

"Inventory."

"Don't touch any of my shit, man. I have a system in there."

"Yeah, sure," Dave grunted and grabbed a box of cymbals marked with a thick black marker, Taylor.

"I'm serious, man. I need to know where my shit is when Wiley and I-" he stopped suddenly and Dave frowned at the sound of the phone being pressed against a shoulder along with a second, muffled voice. Her voice. Then Taylor again, "Hey, I gotta go."