The smell of bacon and slightly burnt toast was surprisingly relaxing first thing in the morning. Perhaps it was because eating a proper breakfast in the dining room of a hotel wasn't something they had the chance to do very often. Up until recently, Jace had tried to keep Savannah from the public eye, so they'd usually just order room service before sneaking out of the back of the hotel. Either that, or their mornings required a bit of hustle on their parts, so they didn't have the time to enjoy a proper sit down breakfast.
But they had today off and they were planning on making the most of it. Seeing as they were in Miami and Savannah had never seen the ocean before, they wanted to take her to the beach, but first, a hearty breakfast was in order.
Savannah stood between Jace and Austin as the elevator doors slid open to reveal the lobby, at three years old, coming up to below their hips. She reached up to grab her father's hand on one side and her uncle's on the other, and the boys wrapped their fingers around her tiny palms as they hoisted her upwards and swung her outwards into the lobby, causing her to giggle and ask for more.
Jace had always been a sucker for his daughter's laugh and Austin was a softie when it came to children in general, so they did as requested and swung her all the way to the hotel's dining room, Ryan and Liam following close behind and laughing at the sight.
Mornings like these were Jace's favorite. Of course, he treasured every moment he got to spend with his daughter, but the ones where they weren't rushed and just got to enjoy being together were the best.
Savannah stood on her tip toes as they reached the start of the buffet line, tilting her chin upwards in an effort to see the piles of food laid out in heated trays.
"Daddy," she stomped her foot as she looked up at Jace and jutted out her bottom lip. "I can't see."
Chuckling, Austin let go of her hand, knowing it was Jace's turn to gladly take over the parenting.
"Alright, squirt," Jace sighed as he placed his hands at his daughter's waist and lifted her to his chest, where her small legs immediately locked at his hips, her pint sized ballet flats digging into the waist band of his royal blue board shorts and her arms around his shoulder. "What do you wanna eat?"
Her eyes were wide as she surveyed the options because, generally speaking, she didn't have so much to choose from. More often than not, they were in a hurry, which meant her breakfast consisted of dry Cheerios that she picked out of a plastic snack bag or if he was in a mood where he didn't mind cleaning up her sticky messes, jam on toast. So the fact that she now had the ability to choose from rows upon rows of options was awe inspiring.
"That!" she replied firmly, pointing randomly at one of the trays of food. Jace followed the path of her small finger to the steaming scrambled eggs and reached for a plate from the pile sitting at the front of the table to give her what she wanted.
He piled her plate high with the various foods she pointed at, choosing them based on shape or color or because they just smelled good and not because she had any idea what they were. Once they reached the end of the line, Jace was holding his daughter with arm and a plate full of French toast, eggs, bacon, muffins, and assorted fruits in the other.
"Think you got enough food, Savi?" Austin laughed from his place behind them in the buffet line.
"I'm hungry!" she announced proudly, puffing out her chest as she grinned at her uncle.
"Good," Austin nodded as he scooped scrambled eggs onto his already overloaded plate.
Jace laughed lightly, looking to the other side of the buffet line to see that Liam was loading up two plates, one for himself and one that looked as though it had all of Jace's preferred breakfast food on it. Shooting the drummer a grateful smile, Jace shifted his arm to hike his daughter up higher on his hip before turning to carry her to the table where Ryan was already munching down on a strip of bacon.
Placing the plate on the table top, he used his now free arm to lift Savannah from beneath the elbows and set her down in the chair next to Ryan. He grabbed a few napkins from the pile Ryan had already set on the table, knowing Savannah had a penchant for making a mess while she ate, and began arranging them precisely: one in her lap, one on the table beside her plate, and one tucked into the neckline of the floral sundress she was wearing over her red polka dotted swimsuit.
His eyes scanned the table to see if he was missing anything as Liam and Austin came to join them, the drummer placing Jace's plate at the head of the table beside Savannah, knowing the food would get cold because the lead vocalist would be too busy making sure his daughter ate to do the same for himself.
"Drink," Jace snapped his fingers, speaking more to himself than to anyone in particular. Settling his gaze on his three year old, he smiled softly. "Honey, you want something to drink? Milk or water or juice?"
Pursing her lips outward, she thought very carefully for a moment before responding. "Apple juice!"
"Alright," Jace grinned, "Coming right up."
Turning on his heel, he wove his way through the tables in the hotel's dining room towards the beverage bar behind the buffet, humming to himself as he filled a small glass with apple juice for Savannah and a cup with coffee for himself. His fingers turned tightly around the receptacles as he carefully made his way back to the table, only to have his eyes widen in horror at the sight of his daughter crawling on her hands and knees from one end to the other.
"Savannah!" he gasped, setting the cups down on the table as quickly as he could without causing them to spill over and reaching out to grip her waist, pulling her into the air and against his chest, giggling as she looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and innocent. His lips parted to reprimand her, but the combination of her adorable smile and the fact that all of the boys were snickering over their breakfast plates caused him to close his mouth and sigh. Scrunching his nose, he rubbed it against hers before walking around the table to set her back into the chair next to Ryan and pushing the glass half filled with apple juice next to her plate.
Ignoring his own food despite the fact that his stomach was growling at the bacon and eggs on his plate and watching his band mates shovel forkfuls of potatoes into their mouths wasn't helping, he picked up the fork next to Savannah's plate and stabbed a piece of cantaloupe, holding it out as an offering in front of her lips.
"Wanna try?" he asked as she tilted her head to the side and inspected the light orange fruit.
Parting her lips, she sat up on her knees and braced her small hands against the edge of the table as she leaned forward and closed her mouth around the piece of fruit, chewing thoughtfully before scrunching her nose in disgust and shaking her head. "Yuck!"
"Not a fan?" he laughed. "Alright, why don't you pick what you wanna eat next."
She surveyed her plate carefully, eyes drifting over the eggs and bacon and muffins before taking another look at the fruit pile and pointing at a cut up strawberry. "That one."
She'd had the sweet red fruit before, but she probably didn't remember and was just choosing it because she liked the pretty color. Poking the slice with the fork, Jace held it to her lips and watched as she nibbled on an edge, her lips stretching into a smile as she decided she liked it before gobbling down the rest.
Jace fed her the rest of the fruit and was about to move onto the eggs, which probably needed to be reheated, when Savannah spoke in a weak voice.
"Daddy, I no feel so good."
The statement caused all of them to freeze and Jace hurriedly set down the coffee cup that he'd been sipping out of as he held forkfuls of food in front of Savannah's lips to reach out a hand and feel her forehead and cheeks, frowning in the process. "You're not warm. Does something hurt?"
She bobbed her head up and down, her curly pigtails doing the same. "It itchy."
Furrowing his brow in confusion, he ran his thumbs lightly over her cheeks and turned her head from side to side, his eyes slowly widening in horror as he realized her lips had swelled to at least twice their normal size.
"Hospital," he sputtered out, his frightened gaze shifting to his friends, who had already abandoned their meals and were quickly rising from their seats. "We need to go to a hospital. Now."
The boys followed orders silently and he lifted Savannah from her chair and held her close to his chest as Liam dug out his phone to call someone with a shiny black SUV to pick them up. He kept his lips pretty much pressed to the top of her head the entire time he was walking out the back door of the hotel and holding her cradled in his arms in the car, hoping that perhaps his love and affection would take away whatever pain she was feeling.
And he could tell she was feeling pain because she was so quiet. Savannah's talkatively was how he judged her mood. Under the best of circumstances, she would be chattering nonstop, which why Jace knew that something was really wrong, because she was utterly silent.
Wrapping his arms around her tiny frame, he heard her breathing become labored as though her throat were closing up and he wished with all his heart that he could breathe for her, but settled for kissing the top of her head repeatedly until their car came to a stop outside the emergency room.
He clutched her to his chest as he hurried inside, running up to nearest nurse, sitting behind a large reception desk, his tone urgent and pleading. "Ma'am, please I need help. I don't know what's wrong with my daughter. Her lips are swollen and I think she's having trouble breathing."
Savannah's labored breathing accompanied by the barely audible whine of, "Daddyyy," that she managed to push past her lips confirmed his words and the nurse nodded, standing from behind the desk and gesturing to a nearby exam room.
"Just in there," the nurse directed the harried father, "A doctor will see you shortly."
Jace began to talk towards the room the nurse had mentioned and the other boys followed, filing into the small room which was filled with a few medical devices on poles, a bed covered with thin white paper, and nothing more than a plastic curtain to shut them off from the outside world. They squeezed themselves around the bed, Jace sitting Savannah atop the crinkly paper, his hand coming up once again to feel her face and finding her body temperature was still normal. Her lips, however, where swollen and red and she kept reaching up to scratch her throat.
"How you doing, baby?" Jace asked softly, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead. "You doing alright?"
"Itchy," she repeated, the only word besides 'daddy' that she'd been able to communicate over the past twenty minutes.
He sighed, having no idea what that meant, but was distracted when the nurse pulled back the plastic blue curtain and shoved a clipboard full of paper near his face. Liam reached out to grab it before Jace could react and the nurse didn't bother arguing with how much Savannah's uncles knew about her, not knowing that if she had, she would have lost.
Jace had felt extremely guilty about missing the first six months of Savannah's life, so as a result, he had spent one of his few days off ensuring he found out as much as he could. In the process, he'd drilled all of her information – birthday, medical history, etc – into each of his band mates' brains as well. If needed, they could convincingly pass as being related, just from their knowledge, which was fitting, seeing as he considered them family anyway.
Shooting the drummer a tight lipped, grateful smile, Jace turned his attention back to his daughter, whose breathing was becoming shallower by the minute, wishing there was something, anything he could do, and finally settling for just rubbing his palm up and down her back soothingly as he and Austin softly harmonized to a song to keep her calm.
"Hey, man," Ryan said, resting a hand on Jace's shoulder and squeezing gently as he raised his pierced eyebrow. "Are you alright?"
It was a question no one had asked him yet and if he was being completely honest he wasn't entirely sure how to answer because the only thoughts that popped into his mind sounded extremely harsh. Such as, 'I'm probably the worst father ever' or 'this is gonna be all over the news in a couple hours'.
The latter was something he had scolded himself for thinking at all. But the reality was that all of his actions in public were well documented and although a hospital wasn't a place where paparazzi would expect them to be, if they stuck around long enough, it was only a matter of time before someone snapped a picture of them and posted it online. His daughter was already in enough distress and he didn't want a sea of people with cameras waiting for them outside the emergency room.
"I don't know," Jace shrugged, sighing as he continued his slow rubbing of Savannah's back. "I feel like I should have been able to prevent this somehow. Like I should have seen the signs or something."
"How could you have known?" Liam asked, not looking up from where he was inking Savannah's date of birth onto a medical form. "You don't even know what's wrong."
"I guess we'll find out soon enough," Jace muttered as the curtain was pulled open again and a middle aged woman stepped through, her white coat indicating she was the doctor for whom they were waiting.
"Hello," she smiled warmly, her eyes surveying the men in the room before settling on Savannah, "I'm Dr. Jenkins, and you must be Savannah. It's nice to meet you."
Because her father had taught her to always be polite, Savannah smiled weakly in response, earning her a grin from the doctor, who pulled a small flashlight from the pocket of her white coat. "Can you open wide for me sweetie?"
Savannah did as she was asked and the doctor went about doing various tests to figure out what was wrong, including feeling the sides of Savannah's neck and peering at the back of her throat. It took about five minutes, all of which the members of the band spent holding their breath, and when she was finished, the doctor shot them all a reassuring smile as she spoke, stepping towards the curtain to wrap a hand around the plastic edge. "It looks like she just had an allergic reaction."
"Allergies?" Jace's eyebrows rose in surprise because he had expecting something life threatening. "To what?"
The doctor stuck her head outside of the curtain, speaking quickly to a nurse before stepping back into the exam room to respond to Jace's question. "What did she eat for breakfast this morning?"
Jace proceeded to list off everything he remembered piling on Savannah's plate that morning, his rant being cut off after he said strawberries.
"That could be it," Dr. Jenkins said, smiling at the nurse when she reappeared holding a small cup of liquid and taking into her hands. "Strawberries are a very common food allergy."
Furrowing his brow in confusion, all of the boys watched as the doctor gently asked Savannah to part her lips and then tipped the liquid into her mouth, laughing when the three year old contorted her features in disgust after swallowing and let out a horrified, "Yuck!"
"That was Benadryl," the doctor explained before any of them could ask. "Any antihistamine will work in this situation. If she ever has another allergic reaction, just give her the recommended dosage and she should be good to go. It doesn't look like her allergy is severe enough to cause her body to go into shock."
"I don't understand, though," Austin piped, much like the others, recalling a few previous times when Savannah had eaten strawberries, whether at breakfast or as a snack. "She's had them before and this has never happened."
"You don't usually have a reaction the first time you try something," Dr. Jenkins smiled. "It's the subsequent exposure that causes the allergy."
"Thanks, Doc," Jace smiled gratefully, glad that the entire situation had turned out to not be as a big deal as he originally thought. Sure, he still hated the fact that he had to bring his daughter to an emergency room at all and seeing her labored breathing had all but ripped his heart from his chest, but he could already tell she was getting better, the color returning to her cheeks and that light he loved so much coming back into her eyes.
He knew he had a tendency to overreact when it came to Savannah – one time even calling his mother from his Chicago hotel room when his then two year old daughter had gotten a cold, because he was seeking the best remedies to stop her sniffles – but he figured it was better to be overly concerned than to not be concerned at all. He would forever feel bad about not being there for Savannah's birth, and although he often admitted to his three best friends that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, he truly was trying his hardest to be the best father possible, the kind of father that someone as wonderful as Savannah deserved.
The doctor bade them goodbye and Jace held Savannah against his side, his arm acting as a chair for her to sit on as Liam left the necessary paperwork with the nurse and they headed back outside. Jace's heart swelled at the sight of the vivacity in Savannah's wide blue eyes and her lips slowly but surely stretching into that smile that acted as a daily reminder that anything was possible.
As they stepped outside to meet the shiny black SUV that Ryan had called while they were walking, relieved to find no media personnel waiting for them because they hadn't been around long enough, Jace made a mental note to keep Savannah away from anything that could possibly have strawberries, even if that meant cleansing their entire house back home, because he didn't want to ever find out whether her allergies could turn into something more serious.