Previously on Brothers and Sisters: Julia and Tommy found out they were having twins; Robert admitted what really happened in the chopper "rescue"; Justin got called up again by the army; Holly gave Nora hell about letting Rebecca stay with her; Joe and Rebecca kissed, and Sarah described the aftermath as "relationship hell"; Robert mock-accused Kitty of reneging on her proposal, which she denied doing; and Julia went into premature labor.

Fade up on a waiting room at the hospital, where the Walker clan is arranged in various broody poses, except for Tommy, who's pacing. Nora tries to get Tommy to eat something; he's not hungry, and freaks that they're not in L.A. with their regular doctors. Nora: "Parental panic -- it'll be with you the rest of your lives, so: pace yourself." Kevin grumbles good-naturedly while rearranging Scrabble tiles (and what a spot-on detail for the Walkers, that someone would have packed in a board game) that he had a chance to do something heroic for these teeny babies, one or both of whom may be biologically his, but Justin "is trained for this." Justin grunts that it wasn't heroic, that the paramedics getting there fast made the difference, but Kevin insists very sincerely that "it was heroic" (aw), and Saul observes that delivering premature twins in a vineyard probably wasn't what the army had in mind for Justin when he enlisted. That's an odd thing to say under the circumstances; not sure where that line meant to go, but Saul goes on that the twins could just as easily be biologically Justin's.

A doctor emerges and tells Tommy that Julia's doing fine, she just needs to rest; the doctor also says that Justin "did some excellent work," and we cut to Kevin nudging Justin all, "See?" Aw! Tommy asks about the babies; the doctor expositions that, at their early stage of development and low birth weight, "we're fortunate we got them here when we did." Which tells him exactly nothing, and Nora begins grilling the doctor on the babies' Apgar scores and so forth while the siblings chatter amongst themselves all "do they give that test to preemies" and "what has peeing got to do with" rhubarb rhubarb, and Justin gets up and physically pulls Nora away. Tommy tells the doctor, "Tight family -- kind of like a vise." The doctor says that preemies this young always have "issues," but the girl twin is doing quite well. "Just... the girl?" The doctor non-answers that they should continue that conversation with Julia present. She leaves, and Tommy turns to the family and lies that everyone's fine, although they were sitting not five feet away and could probably hear, if not see via body language, that "fine" is not entirely the case. Nora asks when they can see the babies, and Tommy says that they're preemies, so it could be a while, and urges the others to go home, he's got it from here. Everyone protests, but Tommy stands firm. Nora watches him, dismayed, as the others get up and collect their things, Saul grumbling about Kevin's driving, and they line up to hug Tommy and murmur encouraging things to him; Nora is last in line, and she's in the middle of running down her contact information and how he should call anytime because she doesn't sleep (hee) when he interrupts her: "Mom, Mom, Mom, can you... stay?" She says yes, but her face says that she knows she can't fix this, and she's both sad and scared about that -- just the first of about a hundred ways large and small that Sally Field kicks ass in this episode.