Nick held his head in his hands, elbows resting against his knees, his back aching against the hard plastic chair beneath him. He had been napping in a chair for the better part of a half hour but had found it impossible to find a comfortable position to do more than just rest his eyes. It was coming up on twenty-four hours since they’d gotten a phone call to come down to the hospital and they hadn’t moved since.

It had been challenging at first to get Peggy out of the bathroom but once he’d explained that Allen was on the phone and said they needed to get to the hospital right away she flew into action. They’d thrown on whatever clothes that were within arm’s reach and left their differences behind them as they rushed to the hospital.

As Allen had explained to him on the phone, he was woken up by a strange noise in the middle of the night and looked over to see that Peggy’s sister Marilyn was struggling to breathe. He had called for an ambulance right away but by the time the paramedics arrived she had slipped into unconsciousness and, as of yet, had not woken up.

Marilyn had been in bed for days before that, fighting to recover from cancer treatments that were ravaging her body almost as much as the cancer. The doctors told them once they’d arrived at the hospital that while she lay in bed fluid had built up on her lungs and she’d developed serious pneumonia. No one knew why she hadn’t told anyone she wasn’t feeling well but Allen had theorized that she was already feeling so terrible she likely hadn’t noticed any additional symptoms or hadn't wanted to bug anyone with them.

Nick toyed with the idea of going home at one point to take a proper nap and get them some fresh clothes but Peggy had been attached to him like a lifeline and he felt like if he left she might lose it. Everyone’s biggest fear was that the next time the doctors came out they would be telling them it was time to say goodbye and Nick knew that Peggy was nowhere near ready for that. Allen, on the other hand, seemed to be strangely calm and had steeled himself against the potential for bad news simply for the sake of his children.

Nick had coloured with the two girls earlier while Peggy’s family talked with the doctors and it was clear that they were well aware of the severity of the situation. He felt awful that these two young people who should only be worried about scraped knees and what was in their lunchbox were instead coming to terms with the fact that they may never see their mother awake again.

Peggy’s head was rested on his back and he could feel her rubbing her cheek against the softness of his shirt. With a tired stretch he reached out one hand and gripped her thigh, wanting her to know that even though he was half asleep, he was still there.

“Any change?” Amy asked and Nick felt Peggy move off of him so she could answer her cousin.

In Nick’s family, tragedies always managed to pull everyone further apart. Whenever someone died it became a competition about who cared about that person the most. The person who supposedly cared the least was usually shunned, excluded from family grieving and, more often than not, named Nick.

It appeared to be the opposite in Peggy’s family though. In the early morning, after they’d been at the hospital for hours, people started arriving and brought along decent food and toiletries for everyone that was living in the waiting room. Nick had been most surprised when Amy and Dustin had walked through the door and were both on their best behaviour. It amazed him that they could forget about the fact that the last time they’d been around each other it had been awkward and embarrassing and just focus on the fact that Marilyn would have told them to put their shit aside for her.

“Still the same, she hasn’t woken up,” Peggy replied sleepily.

The door to the waiting room opened and Allen walked in looking ragged. He had always remained steadfast and calm during the duration of Marilyn’s illness so everyone took his demeanor to mean that things weren’t as good as they could be. He and his daughters had gone into Marilyn’s room hours before so they were surprised to see him in the middle of the night.

“Hey guys,” Allen greeted the room with a sad smile. He thanked everyone for coming then quietly asked to speak to Peggy, her brothers and parents alone. Nick stayed in his seat until he felt a tugging on his arm and looked up to see Peggy urging him to come.

“He wants to talk privately with family - not me,” Nick whispered as to not disturb anyone else in the room.

“You’re my family, remember?” Peggy stressed, pulling on his arm again until he got up and followed her out into the hallway.

He got a couple of strange looks as he followed the group into the hallway but no one said anything about his presence - another difference between his own family from his girlfriend’s. The news Allen had to deliver wasn’t good. The doctors had told him that there was a fairly high chance that Marilyn wouldn’t make it through the night.

She had decided when her illness had become quite severe saying that under no circumstances was she to be kept alive if there was no chance of recovery. She never wanted her children to have to see her as a vegetable and Allen had supported her choice. It had finally come to the point though where they had to come to terms with the fact that if she stopped breathing the doctors would step away and let nature take its course.

Peggy was squeezing his bicep tightly and Nick felt her intake of breath increase with every word Allen spoke. She was soon near gasping and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, softly encouraging her to calm down.

“I can’t,” she panicked, her eyes full of fear.

Nick rubbed her back but she soon started hyperventilating, getting everyone’s attention as they all now tried to ease her worry.

“You need to take a deep breath,” Nick coaxed, trying to get her to ignore the comments from her family who were all firing out different recommendations for what she should do.

“Nick,” she managed to get out through laboured breaths, tears falling from the corners of her eyes as she realized that her sister could be moments away from death and nothing she could do could stop it.

He couldn’t keep the worry from his face as he tried to coach Peggy into breathing normally again. It scared him how fast her breathing was and he knew she wasn’t getting enough air. He barely had a hold of her arms when her eyes rolled back in her head and she went totally limp, almost bringing him down with her as she fainted. Her brother dove to keep her from hitting the floor and he helped Nick get her into his arms while her mother went for help.

Nick gave Allen a sympathetic look as he held Peggy closely, unable to imagine what the other man must have been going through. A nurse soon appeared pushing a gurney and Nick laid Peggy down on the bed, excusing himself from the group so they could deal with their problems while he dealt with Peggy’s.

“She fainted,” he explained to the nurse as he followed her down the hall and into an empty room. They were soon joined by the doctor on call who checked Peggy’s vitals then ordered a blood test to make sure she wasn’t low on iron. Before the nurse could leave the room Nick caught her by the arm, glancing quickly between his girlfriend passed out on the hospital bed and the woman in scrubs. “I need you to do me a favour.”

~*~

It was nerve wracking for everyone having both Peggy and Marilyn unconscious and lying in hospital beds. The entire group was terrified that something might happen to the elder sister while the younger was passed out so they had pleaded with the doctors to at least put them both in the same room.

Once he was sitting down in the chair next to Peggy’s hospital bed Nick found it impossible to stay awake and he had drifted off, waking a few hours later to a dark room filled only with the sound of beeping heart monitors.

With a groan he pulled himself into a seated position, looking to his right to see that Peggy was still out like a light. Across the room, in the bed next to Marilyn, slept the two girls and Allen was on a cot between them. The sun was starting to come up, sending a stream of light in through the window towards the head of Marilyn’s bed. Not wanting it to shine in her face, Nick got up to close the curtain around her bed, stunned when he saw the woman staring back at him.

“Oh my god,” he said breathlessly, watching as she lifted her fingers in a small wave. Dashing to the other side of the bed he hit the nurse call button then roused Allen from his sleep. The other man bolted out of bed and to his wife’s side and almost instantly there was a flurry of activity in the room with doctors and nurses rushing to Marilyn’s side.

Nick was pushed out of the way and back to the other side of the room, feeling completely useless. The nurse that he had spoken to earlier about Peggy came over briefly to check on the girlfriend’s vitals, giving Nick a smile.

“She woke up earlier,” the nurse explained in a hushed tone, “but you were asleep and we didn’t want to wake you. She’s just resting right now, she was pretty exhausted.”

“Oh thank god,” he breathed a sigh of relief, reaching out to gently squeeze Peggy’s foot through the blankets laying over here. “Why did she faint? Was it like I thought?”

The nurse gave him a regretful smile then put a new bag of saline for Peggy’s IV up on a pole. “Sorry, I can’t tell you that. Immediate family only. You shouldn’t even be in here - they thought you were her husband.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

“My daughter is a huge fan of yours. I would have known immediately if you’d gotten married,” the nurse said with a chuckle, patting him on the arm as she moved to return to Marilyn’s side of the room.

The noise of the chatter was not quiet enough for Peggy to keep sleeping through and her eyes shot open, relieved to see Nick standing at the end of the bed.

“Hey,” he said with a smile, coming around to kiss her forehead. “I was so worried about you. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” she dismissed him. “I’m sorry I scared you. What’s going on? Why is there so much noise? Is Marilyn okay?”

Peeking around the curtain quickly Nick saw that Marilyn’s bed was now propped up and it appeared as though Allen was talking with the doctors. Looking back to Peggy he nodded and smiled.

“Yeah, she woke up just before you. I don’t know what else is up but... she made it through the night. That’s something, right?”

Peggy’s eyes were full of happy tears and she nodded, “Yeah, that’s really something.”

He kissed her forehead again, pulling away just as the curtain swung open and a doctor walked in. “Good morning!” he chirped, grabbing Peggy’s chart off the end of the bed. “How do you feel?”

Peggy repeated the words she’d told Nick to the doctor, the pair of them watching the doctor scan across the updates that were written on her chart during the night. After a quick check to confirm everything was okay the doctor gave Peggy the all clear to return to being a visitor rather than a patient.

“How’s my sister?” Peggy asked.

The doctor smiled and patted her hand, “She’s out of the woods for now. The outcome looks positive at this point.”

“Sorry,” Nick interrupted before the doctor could leave. “Why did she faint? You did blood tests and stuff right?”

The doctor confirmed that they had before addressing Peggy with his response, “We didn’t find anything too out of the ordinary. Your iron was a bit low, you were dehydrated but I would say the real reason you fainted was because you were having a panic attack. That’s not unusual in times of extreme stress. We gave you some fluids, let you rest and now you should be good to go.”

“Are you sure?” Nick asked and Peggy looked at him as though he were crazy to question a medical professional. “You said you did blood tests but did you test for everything?”

The doctor chuckled and nodded at the other man, “We tested for everything within reason. Nothing was out of the ordinary. That’s my educated opinion.”

The doctor left the room and Nick sat down in the chair next to the bed, looking defeated. Peggy sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, resting her feet on his knee as he slumped down in the chair.

“What was that?” she wondered curiously. “Why do you look like someone kicked your puppy?”

Nick covered his face with both hands and shook his head. He leaned back in the chair until he was looking at the ceiling, mentally chastising himself for his bizarre behaviour.

“It’s stupid,” he said but Peggy encouraged him to tell her anyway. He sat back up and leaned on the arm of the chair, resting his temple against his fist while the other hand trailed gently up and down her calf.

“I imagined it like a movie,” he explained. “After you fainted... I thought for sure they would do the blood tests and then come in here and tell us that the test you did was a false negative and you were pregnant. I don’t know why I thought that or why I would even...”

Nick was taking deep breaths, obviously trying to keep himself from getting emotional and Peggy gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Babe,” she cooed, running a foot up and down his thigh. “The other day you didn’t even want kids at all. To the point that you thought we should break up. Now you’re upset because we didn’t get some kind of Hollywood finish. I know you’re thinking about it more now than you were before but it wouldn’t have magically fixed our issues. Let things happen in their own time.”

“Just stop trying to not try,” Nick said aloud to himself and Peggy craned her head, giving him a quizzical look. “Something Allen said to me. Just ignore me.”

Peggy chuckled, shaking her head at him before hopping off the bed, grabbing her clothes to change out of the hospital gown she had ended up in some time during the night. “Who changed my clothes?”

“Nurses,” Nick answered as he picked up his cell phone to check his email. “I watched though.”

“I bet you did,” she laughed with a roll of her eyes and started getting dressed.

Nick watched as his inbox filled with emails despite the fact that it was five in the morning and most of the people who would be contacting him on the west coast were likely asleep or close to it. Before he could click on the first email the date on the screen caught his eye and he smiled before looking up at Peggy.

“Happy month-a-versary,” he said and she gave him another confused glance.

“Our anniversary is in the spring. We’ve only had one and you’ve already forgotten?” she teased as she pulled her shirt over her head.

“Not our anniversary,” he clarified, “our month-a-versary. It’s been a month today since we moved in together.”

“Aww,” Peggy smiled then leaned over to kiss him quickly. “Happy month-a-versary to you, too.”

“You know, I read in Cosmo once that if you can make it through the first month then you’re doing okay.”

Peggy snorted, “You were reading Cosmo?”

Rolling his eyes, Nick waved her off, “There was an interesting article. We made it though. The first month is behind us. The stuff that was bugging me when we first moved in together... I barely even remember what it was now. I’m just so used to you being part of my day.”

“Which stuff that was bugging you when we first moved in? Not anything I don’t already know?” Peggy asked with an uneasy laugh, putting her hands on her hips.

Nick froze like a deer in headlights, eyes wide and paralyzed. A lazy smirk then crossed his face and he stood, pulling Peggy into his arms, “I told you I don’t even remember.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” she told him, returning his embrace. “The closet has been spick and span for weeks and for the record you leaving your wet towels on the floor still bugs the shit out of me.”

“Well,” he said, squeezing her a little tighter, “at least now you know what to expect.”

Peggy smiled at him and swatted his behind as he made his way out of the curtained area to check on Marilyn, both of them silently hoping that the drama during their first month of cohabitation had filled their quota for at least another six months.