917Disclaimer - I don't own Bones.
Here I am once again, posting a chapter for ya'll, but once again I don't know when the next one is going to be up. The school year is coming to an end and I'm just not sure what the next few weeks are going to be like for me. I do apologise :( Anyway... Thanks to all the usuals and happy reading!
Chapter 46
The rest of Saturday lingered on and dragged by for those in the Booth and Brennan household.
While Booth, Sidney, and Elsie rested in the living room all day, alternating between sleeping, watching television, and the occasional vomiting session, Parker and Brennan spent the day playing nursemaid. All day long they made sure everyone stayed comfortable, hydrated, and full of medicine.
It became clear to Brennan that Elsie's usually cheery disposition was contingent upon having a regular temperature and that when it rose, she became fussy and unpleasant. She also became very clingy and would only let Brennan touch her. As a result, Parker spent most of his time waiting on his father and brother.
On Sunday morning, after another nearly sleepless night attending to sickies, Brennan was once again woken by Elsie's cries emanating from down the hall. Hauling herself, and her nearly eight months pregnant belly out of bed, she took her daughter's temperature and gave her another dose of medicine all the while hoping that that day she could, maybe, at least get the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and rest her swollen ankles for ten minutes.
Brennan decided it would probably be most practical to go downstairs and attempt the tasks before everyone else awoke and needed 'Mom'.
As Brennan set Elsie in her playpen and silently hoped her daughter would go back to sleep, she saw the face before the wails came, and sighed. After deeming it better to attempt the dishes one handed that wake everyone up, she picked the baby back up and got started. She scrubbed dish by dish of the gunk that remained on them and loaded them into the dishwasher. As she was placing the last fork in the dishwasher she was surprised to look up and find Parker standing pajama clad in the kitchen.
"Hey, Bones," he said.
Brennan looked at the clock - 8:03. "Hello, Parker. What are you doing up so early? Today's Sunday. You usually like to sleep in on the weekends."
The boy shrugged and said half-heartedly, "I don't know. I just couldn't sleep anymore - Dad is throwing up again."
Closing the door to the half full dishwasher and turning to the island counter where Booth's Tylenol was, she got two pills out and then faced Parker.
"I'm sorry Buddy, I know this is not what you expected your weekend to be like." She jotted her head toward the stairs. "I'm going to go give your father some medicine. He should have had some more at six but I didn't want to wake him. I'll be right back and we can watch some TV or play a game before everyone else comes back down, okay?"
Parke nodded and said, "Sure. And here," he held his arms out for the baby. "I'll watch Elsie for you."
Handing her over, Brennan waited to see if her daughter would react negatively to the transfer. She didn't, thankfully, and the anthropologist headed upstairs.
Booth, arms hugging the toilet and cheek resting against the rim, was too focused on trying to hold his last meal in and didn't hear Brennan come in until she was already seated on the ground beside him.
He heard the movement and then felt the gentle touch of her hand rubbing his back, making soothing circles, and then a kiss to his forearm, and finally her hand moved up and ran itself through his hair. For a moment Booth thought that his Bones was a miracle cure, but then that awful feeling rose once more from the pit of his stomach and it took all he had to suppress it. A groan escaped his lips.
"Just let it out, Booth." She murmured against his arm, then lifted her head to hopefully be out of splash distance. "I guarantee it will make you feel better. Vomiting is your body's natural way to rid itself of toxins."
Shaking his head just slightly he replied childishly, "I really don't wanna, Bones. I hate it."
Sighing the anthropologist tried to reason with him. "I know how much you hate vomiting, Booth - trust me you've made that clear to me on many occasions. But just think of how much better you'll feel once you're all done. And you'll be able to take these Tylenol and that will hopefully make you feel even better."
Whether it was because she had used her rationale on him or because he just couldn't hold it in any longer, Brennan didn't know, but in that moment his stomach heaved and he let loose on the toilet.
Brennan grimaced at the smell, her pregnancy causing her to be more sensitive to such things, and tried to breathe through her mouth, though she swore it wasn't any better.
As his retching slowed and finally stopped, Booth sat straighter and leaned away from the toilet against the wall next to Brennan.
"Do you feel any better?" she asked.
Nodding his head slowly he turned his face towards his partner; surprised to see her eyes widen slightly and gasp.
His own eyes going wide he asked frantically, "What? Is it the baby? What's wrong?"
He started to get to his feet but Brennan stopped him with a hand on the arm. "Wha- no, Booth. You have a subconjunctival hemorrhage in your left eye - that's all."
His hand immediately flew to his eye, and feeling nothing out of the ordinary he looked at her with unease he asked, "A subjunction hemorrhage? What is that?"
With a small laugh she said, "It's simply a broken blood vessel just underneath the clear surface of your eye. It will most likely look like a bruise on your eyeball in a couple of days. It's nothing to worry about. It doesn't hurt right?"
Blinking a few times he shook his head.
"Then you're fine." Brennan shrugged and stuck her hand with the pills out. "Now take this and go lie back down, please."
After helping Booth back into their bed, Brennan checked in on Sidney, who was still under the influence of medicine and sleeping comfortably, and then headed back downstairs to Parker.
"Is Dad okay?" he asked Brennan when he saw her.
Elsie had fallen asleep in his arms and the anthropologist carefully picked her up, placing her in the playpen.
Straightening, Brennan did a half shrug. "I wouldn't exactly say okay, but he is no worse than he was previously."
Parker smile at her phrasing and asked, "What do you want to do?"
"Well I was thinking," Brennan said as she went to a kitchen drawer and held up a deck of cards, "That we could play a card game. Do you know any?"
The boy thought about it. "Not really. I mean I know Go Fish, but that game is kinda for babies. Can you teach me one?"
"Of course." Brennan took up residence on the floor on one side of the large footstool, gesturing for Parker to do the same, and started shuffling the deck. "Okay, Parks, this is a something my Dad and I used to play when I was young - Speed is the name of the game, the name of the game is Speed."
Later that day, Booth finally reentered the world of the living and came downstairs when it was time for his next dose of medicine. He ignored the four heads that looked up at him from the living room and headed straight for the kitchen. After coming up empty in his search for relief he called out, "Bones, where's the medicine? I can't find it!"
Unwilling to get up from the floor to speak in more quiet voices she called back, "We're out of the pills - you'll have to take the liquid one that's in the cupboard."
Quietly the agent grumbled to himself about the icky taste and the yucky smell, and after measuring it out, he plugged his nose and downed the medicine.
Booth grimaced, stuck his tongue out in a futile attempt to get rid of the taste, and then took a small sip of water. If he weren't afraid of upsetting his stomach he would have happily gone for the milk.
He returned to the living room to see that the rest of his family was actually playing a card game, regardless of the fact that half of them looked pale, clammy and just plain sickly. Knowing the little tidbit from his partners past, about her and her Dad, he gave her his best 'proud of you' smile that he could in that moment.
Despite how miserable the grin had been, Brennan knew what her partner was trying to convey and shot a shy, half-smile back.
"What are you guys playing?" he asked.
Parker, with Elsie resting on his lap, who seemed to be recovering more rapidly than her father, replied, "We just finished another game of Four Kings. First me and Bones played Speed, which was really fun, but you can only play it with two people so when Sidney came down we played a few games of blitz and Four Kings. Do you want to play with us? And what's wrong with your eye?"
"Bones says I popped a blood vessel, it doesn't hurt. Just makes me a little less handsome."
"Huh," Parker said, rolling his eyes, "So do you want to play?"
The boy looked so lively at the simple prospect of playing a card game with his father that Booth had no choice but to nod and sit down on the floor to play. Booth wasn't about to disappoint his son while he still enjoyed the little things in life, no matter how sick he felt or how much he just wanted to lie back down. But he didn't know how much longer they would be able to do things like this together - he knew too well how quickly kids grow up. Not to even mention that Booth wanted to make up as much time as he could with Sidney before he too, grew up.
A couple of games were played until Booth really got the hang of it. And it was then that Brennan declared she was quitting for the moment.
"I have a couple of things I need to accomplish today," she explained when Parker asked why. It was clear to her that he was feeling the effects of being cooped up all weekend. If she was getting out of the house, he wanted to go with her.
"Like what?" he asked skeptically. Sidney and Booth also looked up and listened to hear her reasons.
Silently laughing to herself and shaking her head in wonder at her family's curiosity, she said, "Well I need to do a load or two of laundry, Parker, you know I don't like sending you back to your Mom's with dirty clothes. This place could use some tidying up, as well, and I need to call my Dad."
Parker accepter her reasoning, but Booth questioned it.
"What are you calling Max for?" he asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
"To help out tomorrow while I'm at work," she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I've taken way too much time off as of late... I really just can't take anymore off." Seeing Booth's blank face staring back at her she became uncertain whether she was doing the right thing. "You understand... don't you, Booth?"
"Wha-yeah, of course." He stumbled the find the correct response. "I guess I just assumed you would take off, but no... I mean yeah that's fine if you want to call Max. Though, I'm sure I could do fine on my own."
"I'm sure you could too. But this way you'll be able to rest, thus making it possible for you to recover much more quickly."
Booth was surprised to find the he was actually taken aback that Brennan was not taking work off. It wasn't very long ago that he would have been surprised by the exact opposite. Lately, it had seemed that she'd become much more lax with her work than ever before, taking days off at a time to be with her family here and there, and he supposed that he'd just been spoiled with it. In a way it was a relief to see that she was still the same old Bones he'd come to know and love - that he hadn't changed her too much. Her work was something she loved, and her strong work ethics were a part of who she was, he wasn't about to do anything to change that.
"Thanks, Babe," he told her, sincerity present in his voice.
Nodding her head she left the room.
Turning back when she realized what he had said she called, "Don't call me Babe!"
"Hey, Honey," Max said when he answered the phone.
"Hi, Dad." Brennan tossed articles of clothing into the washer as she juggle the phone with one hand and tried to determine the best way to ask her Father to take care of a house hold of sick people. "Listen, umm... have you had a flu shot this year?" she asked.
"Yesss," he answered, drawing the word out as he tried to guess what his daughter was getting at. "I'm an old man, we tend to do that."
"Of course."
"What are you trying to get at, Tempe?"
A straight to the point question that she could answer with a straight to the point answer. Sometimes Brennan was thankful for her Father. "Booth, Sidney, and Elsie all have the flu and I have to go to work tomorrow - do you think you could come over and help out. Booth seems to be recovering at a slower pace than the kids and I'd like for him to be able to rest so that he can get back to being 100%. It's not that I don't trust him to take care of the kids, I do, I just want to make things as easy as possible. Can you help?"
Max could sense his daughter's uncertainty in asking him for help, but decided not to comment on it. He would give her anything that she asked for. "Of course I'll help. What time do you want me to come over?"
"Well, I usually leave at about seven and if you can't come that early, I'm sure that's fine - everyone else will most likely still be asleep and if they're not Booth can take care of it until you can come."
"No that's alright, Honey," he said, "I'll be there, 6:45, sharp."
"If you're sure, Dad. I'm a bit busy right now or I would talk longer but I've got several things to do."
"That's alright. Don't forget to take care of yourself, too. I'll see you tomorrow, Tempe."
"Tomorrow," Brennan repeated. Then she hung up and finished loading the washer.
The remainder of the day was spent, for the most part, lazily. Brennan did end up accomplishing two complete loads of laundry, though the second load only contained the blanket and Parker's shirt that Elsie had thrown up on.
The family spent the day together, playing games and watching a couple of movies in between when the games got boring or when someone started feeling sick. It was exactly the kind of thing that Max had done for Brennan when she was a child and she was glad to be able to pass down a happy memory to her children.
So that night, when she was driving Parker back to his Mom's, tears came to her eyes when he told her, "You know, you were right about what you said this morning - this weekend wasn't at all what I expected it to be. You know I thought we'd be celebrating the adoptions and stuff like that, but I had a lot of fun, Bones. It was pretty cool that just me and you spent so much time together. And it was also cool that you trusted me as much as you did to help you. So, you know... Thanks for that."
Reaching across the console, Brennan gave Parkers shoulder a squeeze. "You're very welcome, Parker. I had a pretty good time with you, too."
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Also, next up, whenever that may be;), a bit of a time jump and Thanksgiving!
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