Weight In Gold (Brendon Urie)

The Birth

I wake up at a quarter to midnight and look around the waiting room again. The crowd has completely changed. Ryan is awake and on his phone and not a single person from a few hours ago remain here. Even Aurora and her dad are gone. Now, I see a middle aged married couple and a girl who's probably about 19 with a very excited little boy who looks around 8. She seems like she's babysitting him from the way they interact.

Liz has been in labor for 6 hours now, and the baby could be born any second so I think it's best that I stay awake. "Want to go get some food?" I ask Ryan, becoming aware of my hunger. He nods and we walk down the hall towards a little coffee shop they had set up a ways down. "Any word from Brendon?" I ask. Ryan shakes his head. "I hope things are going ok," he says. I nod in agreement. We get to the coffee shop and get our drinks as well as a few bagels and walk back to the waiting room. This time I don't bother getting comfortable because I figure that a nurse will come get us at any time now to let us see the baby.

I finish my coffee and bagel and already half an hour has passed. Then I do some reading on my phone, and another hour passes. I even get a deck of cards from a table in the center of the room and play with ryan for another hour after that, and still we hear nothing. It isn't until almost midnight when a nurse finally walks into the room. "Ashley O'brien and Ryan Ross?" She calls out. We immediately stand up and look at her. "Follow me," she says as she walks into the hall. We do as instructed and follow her down the long, brightly lit hallway that smells like soap. We keep walking until we get all the way to the end of the hall, and then stop at a door with the number 203 painted above it. The nurse tells us to be careful not to cough or sneeze and to sanitize our hands before and after we leave before she lets us in the room. When we step behind the door, I hear crying. both Ryan and I get a squirt of hand sanitizer from the dispenser to the side before we go in any further.

The first thing I see when I enter the body of the room is Liz. She looks exhausted and in a way, humbled. She doesn't seem to have the same ego-fueled confidence that she usually has. She's covered in sweat and looks like she's barely keeping her eyes open. I look around the rest of the room and then see a few doctors as well as Brendon gathered around some kind of table. I guess that's where they're cleaning up the baby. I take a seat in a chair in one of the corners of the room and wait until I can see her. A few minutes later, Brendon walks away from the table with his little girl in his arms. I stand up and meet him in the center of the room.

I look down at the little face swaddled in a blanket and I'm genuinely surprised at what I see. I would have assumed that the baby would either have Liz's green eyes or Brendon's brown ones, but instead her eyes are blue. She also seems to have curly blonde hair. These might be traits that run somewhere in Liz or Brendon's family, but she looks absolutely nothing like either of them.

I don't mention this little observation of mine because it isn't very important. She may not look how I expected, but she is really cute. "She's adorable," I say, looking up at Brendon. "Thanks," he replies. Most dads cry or panic when they first see their baby, but Brendon looks completely calm. "How much does she weigh?" I ask him. "8 pounds and 4 ounces." This confuses me a bit. That seems a bit too big for being almost an entire month pre mature.

Ryan joins me at cooing at the baby before Brendon carries her over to Liz. Liz rocks her and soothes her crying like it's nothing. All of my judgements aside, she seems like she's going to be a good mother.

After Liz has had a few minutes with her baby, a doctor asks what she wants to name her. "Sabrina Rose Smith." She says without a seconds hesitation. "What?" Brendon says, surprised by what he just heard. "You mean Sabrina Rose Urie." He states. "No, I mean what I said." She tells him. "Elizabeth, she already has the first and middle name you chose, can't she have my last name?" Elizabeth stares at him for a second before turning to the doctor. "Sabrina Rose Smith. Final decision." This obviously makes Brendon upset, but he doesnt say anything. He just silently watches the doctor scribble down her name on a birth certificate.

We spend an hour or two all taking turns holding Sabrina and repeatedly agreeing with Elizabeth that "yes, she is very cute," before doctors get involved again.

"I need to take a blood sample from all three of you to test for genetic diseases," one of the doctors says gesturing to Brendon, Liz and the baby. The doctor takes the blood from Brendon and Liz easily, but when he has to prick Sabrina's foot to get a sample from her, she starts crying. The doctor gets his sample eventually and hurries out of the room, but no matter what she tries, Liz just can't seem to get Sabrina to quiet down. After a few minutes, Brendon says, "I think I might have something," and gets something from the other side of the room. He comes back with the little stuffed cat Aurora gave him and puts it in Sabrina's small arms. She stops crying for a second, but as soon  as she quiets down, Liz rips the toy out of her hands and tosses it across the room. "What the hell were you thinking Brendon? That thing looks gross, who knows how many diseases it has," Liz says. Then the crying continues. "I think I need a break," Brendon admits, exiting the room. I don't blame him. If I had to spend nine hours straight with her, I would need a break or two as well.

Neither Ryan nor I want to sit in this room with Liz, so we follow Brendon out of the door. The three of us go down to the cafeteria and buy some food. None of us really start talking until we're all seated an eating.

Ryan stares at Brendon for a few seconds looking concerned. "You doing ok?" he asks. Brendon looks up from his tray and shakes his head. "Not really if I'm being perfectly honest. I don't know if it hasn't sunk in yet that I'm a dad or if I'm just a terrible father, but I think I should be feeling something more when I hold the baby. She's cute and all, but I don't really feel an attachment to her. And I feel awful admitting that." Ryan and I are both quiet. How do you console someone who feels like that? I have no idea if this is normal of if this is a feeling that everyone goes through and I don't know if it's even necessarily ok, so I have no idea what I could say or do to try and comfort him. "She doesn't even look like me," Brendon admits looking defeated. He isn't wrong on that one. She really, really doesn't look anything like him.

We all finish our meals in silence and then proceed back to room 203. When we walk in, the crying has stopped and Sabrina appears to be asleep. We all sit down in different places in the room and wait for something to happen. The next person to enter the room is the doctor that took the blood samples. He takes a long exhale through his nose amd stands in front of Liz's bed. He looks at both her and Brendon and says:

"I have some news."