Do Something Right For Once [2/3?]
Title: Do Something Right For Once
Author: Lora Perry/ lving_darkness
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Not mine, so sorry.
Summary: He's never read a parenting book.
Charecters: THE GANG'S ALL HERE. Alaric, Jeremy, Damon, Elena, Caroline, Tyler, Matt, Bonnie,
Jeremy's fever spikes to 104. They can't get it down.
The fact that they have to go to the hospital is inevitable. Jeremy is far too miserable and Alaric is far too terrified for there to be any other option. He totally would get an "F" if parenting was a class.
He calls Damon and has him come over to watch Elena. The Salvatore brother raises an eyebrow at him and the baby sitting duty he's been assigned but it’s at that moment Jeremy starts throwing up blood. Anything Damon would have said or argued becomes invalid.
The ride to the hospital is silent, Jer attempting to fall back asleep in the passenger seat. His pale face is resting against the window, slow breaths trickling out of his mouth, out of tune. Ric fiddles with the air conditioning, calloused fingers from crossbows tracing the leather of the interior, the soft underside of the steering wheel. He desperately wants Jeremy to say that’s he’s all better and that they can go home, turn the car around [and go back three months and save everyone and then maybe they can all go for a picnic] but instead the kid takes another jagged breath and maybe even whimpers.
He’d deny it if he was ever asked.
At the hospital they take Jer away from him, rushing him beyond closed doors as soon as he says that the patient’s name is Jeremy Gilbert. They leave him with paper work to fill out that he has no idea how to do; questions about great aunts and second cousins and how many vaccinations he had when he was six. He’s only know the kid for a year and he doubts that the fact that he sees dead people is going to fit anywhere on the medical history sheet. He’s reaching for his phone to call Elena when he glances up at the receptionist desk. The Gilbert legacy serves him well here, apparently; a nurse in pink scrubs with light blue sneakers walks over to him and smiles.
“You came in with the Gilbert boy right?”
“Yes, yes I did, I’m Alaric…”
“Saltzman, yes I know. We’ve all kept an eye on Grayson’s kids after everything.”
Ric doesn’t know if he should be thankful or scared or angry. That someone else is watching the kids backs is always good, but he also knows that he’s not the tip top shape guardian, still isn’t sure if how they went about him getting custody of the children is even legal in all fifty states. But Ric can admit that he feels a little angry too; that in a town where so many people profess to have loved Grayson and Miranda; where they continuously say they look at Elena and Jeremy as their own children; why no one else stepped up to the plate after Jenna and John died.
(Jenna had even told him once, laying in her bed, her fingers lazily tracing stars and hearts across his chest, that after the funeral, after the last of the casseroles had been eaten, the town had seemingly disappeared; no more stop bys, no more “is there anything we can do”. They all had just gone on with their lives while Jeremy and Elena got stuck in neutral.)
“I shouldn’t be worried should I?” He instead says- his smile the one he uses to woo over mothers at PTA meetings.
“Not at all, you seem a good fit. You just appeared a bit loss with the medical forms.”
“Ahh, yeah, I. ..I was about to call his sister and…”
“Don’t bother. His father tended to keep all their information pretty up to date, helped pass the time when he got bored.”
“He worked here? I thought he had his own practice in downtown?”
“Yeah, he did, but when his patient came here, he came here. Full rights at the hospital. Dr. Gilbert just cared, ya know? Half our patients were crying when he and his wife passed on.”
Alaric only nods. The town’s saviors and redeemers, gone too young; and he, left with their protégé and prodigy. And he is so going to screw it up.
“But anyway, I just came over here to tell you that you needn’t fill out those forms. We’ve got him mostly up to date, and if there’s anything missing, his pediatrician is on call tonight, Dr. Sterm, and he’ll be probably able to fill in any holes we might have. So you just sit tight, and I’ll come find you when they’ve got something for you.”
“I…I had wanted to go with him. He’s been saying some pretty weird stuff all day from the fever, and I wanted him to have a constant presence.” Also, didn’t want the kid to start talking about the ghosts he saw, his two dead ex-girlfriends who keep diagnosing him with different things.
Last night, before Jer’s fever had spiked again, Anna had decided it was actually the plague-- something she has seen with her own two eyes. Apparently Vicki had just rolled her eyes and gone back to massaging Jeremy’s hair.
“Are you sure you actually see ghosts and don’t just have a vivid male imagination?” Damon had asked after Jer had recanted what the girls had been saying.
Alaric had snorted into his stack of papers.
Now, back at the hospital, the nurse just smiles at him again. “I’ll be sure to let Dr. Sterm know that you’re out here and want to be with Jeremy.”
“Thank you,” he says, though he knows in the back of his head they are only doing it because the kid whose now his is also a prince of this town, the youngest and the most broken (oh, if only they knew how Tyler was now, held together by the glue of Caroline, chains and Ric’s spaghetti).
---
He calls his own mom, scared. He says that Jeremy is sick, real sick, and the doctor have taken him away, and they won’t let him go back with him, and he was throwing up for three days, and that’s bad, he should have gotten there sooner, shouldn’t he have? He doesn't realize that he actually forgot to tell her about the whole ‘became a guardian to two kids’ thing until she asks if Jeremy is his lover. The sputter that comes out of his mouth could have been featured in one of those stupid comedy movies the boys watch.
The he's my kid but really he's my dead girlfriend’s but really it’s my dead girlfriend’s dead sister's kid, but the daughter is actually his step-daughter because Isobel… and mom I need you, escapes him in all in one breath.
She sighs, "oh Alaric" escaping from her lips, the way she usually reserves for his older sister.
The doctor appears at that same moment, white coat trailing behind him.
He almost hangs up on his mother before uttering a quick goodbye.
The doctor asks if Jeremy has been sick lately. Ric wants to respond with the question of ‘does dying and then being brought back by your girlfriend count?’ and ‘can that lower your immune system?’
Instead he says no.
-*_
It’s the stomach flu. The freaking stomach flu.
A bad case of the stomach flu the doctor reiterates. As if that makes the last three days any better. If that made the hour wait any lesser. If that made the dread and fear any less palatable.
He’s going to kill this kid.
They’re going to admit him though; dehydration a concern, the vomiting another.
(the blood that he’d been throwing up was from how raw his throat was-not from his stomach ripping away from its place and doing a dance)
They’re settling him in; a private room on the third floor for the Gilbert heir.
Ric sighs and pulls out his phone, ready to call the troops, kids, Scooby gang (he hates Damon, he hates him) and give them the update.
He’s already got messages.
Caroline is at the house, baking brownies and doing linens. She also ordered dinner for Elena, and made Tyler start his English assignment.
Damon is begging him to take Barbie vampire away.
Matt is wondering if he should be on Bonnie patrol, because “she like goes psycho when J’s hurt, Mr.S.”
Five missed calls from Bonnie
(four from his mother).