"In Due Time"

Synopsis: Taking place six months, or so, after "The Family Way," this basically covers the events around the arrival of Marty and Jennifer's kids.

Length: Approximately 34,000 words

Written: April 22, 2002 - June 9, 2002

Author's Notes: First of all.... Warning! This is sort of a fluff piece! Absolutely positively no time travel takes place in it! Okay, if you're still interested, read on.... I have a weird confession to make -- for some reason, ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated with pregnancy and childbirth. I mean, maybe all women are, to some degree. But how many 7-year-olds who played house actually stuffed their clothes to create a belly and then fake the dramatic labor pains? Or drew pictures of pregnant women at age 8 while "designing" fashions on paper? Or searched in vain for little babies for her Barbies to enact birthing scenes in the playing? I tentatively raise my hand to all of those. Thus, when I started writing stories for fun, at the age of 9, it seemed all my main characters had moms that were having babies. I outgrew that phase after a while, thank God, but it was one of many reasons I was so reluctant to ever let Doc and Clara have a third child way back when. Didn't want to drag my weird little childhood quirk in with my fan fiction. Anyway, this story probably would never have been born -- pardon the expression -- if not for that weird interest combined with the changes in my own life. About half of my female friends from high school now have at least two kids each. I'd always been sort of tempted to write a story about the birth of Marty and Jennifer's kids, but it was one of those things I always set aside because of a lack of plot and it just seemed kind of pointless to do. Then, last July (2001), one of my h.s. pals, Rachel, went in to have her second child, Joel Verne. (She and her husband were oblivious that their son had a first and middle name that, together, sounded so much like a famous science fiction writer.... they had never heard of Jules Verne. I'm sure their kid will, though.) A bunch of us hung out at the hospital all day and night, as she ended up having a 24 hour labor. It was kind of fun and exciting for me -- I'm a sucker for anything that makes me feel remotely like I'm in a movie and hospitals are exotic places to me; excepting my brother getting his appendix out in 1991, I hadn't even been to one to visit someone until the summer of 1999! The seed of writing this story was planted then. It hibernated a while and might've stayed there, but..... One of my close h.s. friends, Melanie, happened to get pregnant with her second kid in the fall of the year I sort of took off, between the graduation of college and the beginning of grad school. So I saw her in all the various states of pregnancy on at least a once a week basis. And I also got dragged to the hospital one Saturday night in April with another mutual pal when she had what turned out to be false labor. There, I saw the beginning of this story and the rest of it as I waited an hour in the almost dead waiting room at 2 A..M., watching the patient fathers-to-be walking the halls with their laboring wives, and the new dads holding their tiny little babies in the lounge while the new mom's slept. The seed began to grow, and my hand almost started to twitch in wanting to write this. In fact, I might've started the story then and there had I not been drop dead exhausted -- I'd taken the MSAT that day at 7 A.M. on 5 hours' sleep the night before -- and the false labor been real. (Melanie's baby, a girl, Bethany Stellina (okay, I have no idea why my friends give their kiddies such odd middle names... but since my Doc and Clara do that, too, maybe I should shut up, now), ended up being born on April 29th in the evening after a unexpected induced labor. I had the fascinating experience of being there in the delivery room with a couple other friends when the baby was born -- and didn't faint, though everyone thought I would because of a self proclaimed squeamishness with blood and body fluids. That task was almost taken up by another friend, who people thought wouldn't, heh heh. And, much like various characters I've written, I realized that I was the wise ass of my friends, cracking stupid jokes when things got really tense. Some weird thing I've noticed before in serious situations and promptly forgotten. I guess it's my way of coping.) So, I after that false labor thing, I took a few days before I settled down to pen this. What the hell. I wrote this for my own edification, basically, which is the bar none reason I write any of my stories -- for me and me alone, selfish as that seems. Don't come looking for action adventure, heavy discussions, or even time travel. None of that's there. (Well, maybe some serious discussions....) I had originally intended for this to be another "secret story," slipped behind the scenes of things, but a few friends who beta read persuaded me to display this on the main page. Ehh.... I figured, what the hell. But this is definitely a "take it or leave it" piece of work. You've been warned, then..... Another thing about this story is that it seems to me the real "point" of it for me, the writer, is to deal with the questions and feelings about Being An Adult. At 23 (as of this penning) I don't really feel that old and wise. Which may be why it thoroughly blows my mind to see my friends herding kids around at this age. I know if I was to have kids now, I would be a little lump of panic at thinking I was some inept psycho who would scar them for life. A couple explanations: I didn't have a title for a while, but while at a doctor's office in April, killing time in the examination room, I picked up some pregnancy magazine -- it was the only thing in English and not about finances or computers -- and saw that there was a maternity clothing line called "In Due Time." The phrase stuck with me... and ended up working on a few levels with this story. So, "In Due Time" it became, and it's one of the few times I feel satisfied and pleased by my title selection. It's like pulling teeth, most of the time.... I will wholeheartedly admit to the selection of Marty's car being something set in the brain by Mary Jean Holmes. She mentioned him driving this in one of her stories, and, from then on, I just saw it as his car. So, what the hell. Lord knows why the McFlys have a dog. Sometimes my brain just sees things in stories that I can't really explain the inspiration behind. This is one of them. Mary Jean threw out the name of the pet, and it clicked, again. A few of my beta readers really liked a part in Chapter Two, with Clayton and Marty and Doc, which I threw in there sort of for my own fun. Alls I can say is, I write from bitter experience with this one, as one of my close friends has a son who is about two months from turning three right now, and every time he gets put to bed while she has friends over, it's like some horrible drawn out torture. He refuses to put on pajamas, refuses to say good night, then requires someone to read, like, three books to him -- and even then he still shrieks when the lights go out and the adults leave the room. I suppose my friends' toddlers and babies give me way too much "inspiration" to write from, but this might be good; it means I don't have to have kids of my own to get a sense of the way they act and behave. The date of June 23rd is significant only in that it happens to be my mom's birthday, as well as that of her older sister. A bit of irony they shared the same b-date, since they definitely aren't twins. And speaking of birthdays, it's dumb luck that I finished this thing on Michael J. Fox's 41st b-day. Clocked in about 40 minues before the turn of midnight. Finally, this wasn't supposed to be this long. I'm sorry? My original intention was to write this within a week -- not a month and a half! -- and I planned to basically be limited to twenty pages and cover simply the action in the hospital -- not deal with a few bits of foreward and afterward. However, the story just sort of came about in that way, which fleshed it out a bit. And it also allowed me to use Clara and Doc more as, originally, I wasn't even sure if the scientist would be in it aside from a bit at the end. How moody and fickle the Muse can be.... I suppose I like the way things turned out. But, jeez, at sixty some pages, for a little "fluff" bit.... Oh well. That's about it. Remember, you've been warned about what kind of story this is -- sort of a "this is the Browns and McFlys in the 'real' world, sans time travel." Take it... or leave, now, 'cause I wouldn't say this is really required reading to understand future things... whenever I write them.

THE STORY