Isabella
Three months later, it was results day for Amber. We all went with her to school to collect her exam results. She wasn’t beside me, fretting—Zach was taking care of her, while Luke just stood, holding my hand.
“She’s all grown up,” I sighed.
I didn’t need to say that I missed her childhood, her dependency on me. It was implied.
“And in one month’s time, you’ll have my son hanging off your breasts for the next eighteen years,” Luke whispered, making me cackle.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. There is something very wrong with you,” I said, rubbing my belly, feeling our child shift beneath my hands.
He wasn’t wrong, though. I was older this time around, but I had Luke, and this baby would have additional support from Amber and Zach too. We were financially secure, and I wouldn’t struggle the way I had with Amber.
Zach had Amber up in the air, spinning her around while she clutched the white sheet of paper above her head. I slid my arm around Luke’s frustratingly slim waist and held him close, watching my children’s happiness unfold in front of us.
“We’ve got great kids,” he whispered.
“Yeah.”
? ? ?
We were on our second lap around the garden when I felt the first contraction. Lewis was on his way. I had to school my features—any hint of pain or sudden excitement would arouse Luke’s suspicions.
We had a hospital protocol for the entire family.
Phase one. Let Luke panic and come to terms with the birth.
Phase two. Notify the reliable female child, who would call in the reinforcement, the male child, and they’d both travel home.
Phase three. Make it to the hospital alive, and give birth.
Phase four. Try not to act traumatised when Amber and Zach came to see the baby. I wanted grandchildren from them, one day.
Luke was saying something about Sadie now being in the psychiatric unit on a long-term basis.
“What? Is that it? She’s locked up?” I asked, rubbing my belly protectively.
He nodded.
I closed my eyes and enjoyed the brisk breeze against my face as it pushed my hair back.
I wasn’t looking forward to being stuck in hospital, but I desperately wanted to meet our baby boy.
“Let’s go inside,” I murmured, already thinking of the hospital bag.
I made the mistake of taking longer going up the stone stairs. His brow furrowed, and he began to inspect me, but then he showed some restraint and didn’t comment. The hospital was a fifteen-minute drive. Rush hour had been and gone.
“Are you okay, darling?” Luke asked.
I smiled and nodded, and then a real contraction hit. I hissed and grabbed onto his arm.
He froze. I watched his face turn two shades paler.
“Get the hospital bags,” I rasped.
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay. Yes. We practised.”
I frowned.
“We did?”
“No. I practised in my head,” he mumbled, moving me further down the foyer until he’d settled me onto the leather bench. “I’ll be right back with the bags.”
I blinked when he bolted out of sight, turning at the bannister and taking the stairs two at a time.
“Hold it inside. Don’t let it come out until I’m there,” he screamed.
I sighed.
He knew it would take hours. What did he think I was going to do? Stretch myself out and lube myself with Vaseline, just to give birth extra quickly out of spite, so he’d miss it entirely?
I could barely reach down there.
I began to take deep breaths, trying to find the calm before the storm. My thoughts drifted, and I imagined holding a dark-haired, brown-eyed baby boy. Or he might look like a mixture of the two of us. Ever since that first scan, it had driven me crazy.
Just as I heard Luke crashing into something upstairs, I thought of the morning I’d taken the pregnancy test. It made such a difference, knowing my child would be wanted. It also helped, not being a teenage statistic this time around.
A little more tension left me.
Luke reappeared minutes later, two hospital bags slung over one shoulder and a third clutched to his chest like a shield, his tie already loosened, his hair standing up in three different directions. He looked like a man who’d survived a small explosion rather than a man collecting overnight bags.
“Right. Right. Right,” he muttered, herding me toward the front door with one hand hovering an inch from my back, as though touching me might set something off prematurely. “Hospital. Now. Yes.”
The drive was, somehow, both agonisingly slow and entirely too fast. Luke drove with both hands locked at ten and two, jaw set, glancing at me every few seconds until I finally told him to watch the road before he killed us both trying to save five minutes.
Streetlights blurred past the window in long amber streaks. Between contractions, I focused on my breathing, on the low hum of the car heater, on Luke’s hand finding mine at every red light and refusing to let go even when the light changed.
By the time we reached the hospital, the automatic doors sliding open onto a wash of bright, sterile light, my contractions had settled into a steady, punishing rhythm.
A midwife met us at check-in, calm and efficient in a way that made Luke visibly relax half a degree, and within twenty minutes we were being shown into a private maternity suite—soft grey walls, a wide reclining chair for Luke that he immediately declared “adequate, but not ideal,” and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the car park, the evening sky beyond them bruising slowly into violet.
“You paid for a better view,” I said, breathless, as another contraction rolled through me.
“I paid for the best room in the building,” he corrected, already unpacking my hospital bag with the focused precision of a man defusing a bomb, laying out my things in some private order only he understood. “You’re having our son in comfort, darling. Non-negotiable.”
I laughed, then groaned, then laughed again, gripping the bed rail as the midwife checked my dilation and murmured something reassuring about progress.
Luke hovered at my shoulder, pale, magnificent, utterly useless, and exactly where I wanted him.
“Not long now,” the midwife said.
Luke’s hand tightened around mine.
“Not long now,” he echoed, quieter, like a promise to himself as much as to me.
I began to pant.
He was coming.
Soon.
But soon turned out to be several hours.