Misty
Two weeks after Georgia asked me to be her matron of honor, technically, at her wedding next fall, I wake up with a start–alone–in the cottage I share with Cole.
It’s the middle of the night, and Cole’s at the hospital. His side of the bed is cold when I stretch my arm across it, pinching the sheets between my fingers. Echoes of pain drift in waves over my belly. My muscles are painfully tight as I roll onto my side, curling around the swell of my stomach.
It hurts enough that it’s hard to catch my breath, and when I finally do, I feel… a pop, deep within me.
“Oh, Goddess,” I rasp, sliding out of bed as my water breaks, soaking the sheets and falling onto the floor. My hands tremble, and my mind goes completely, utterly numb while I take the comforter off the bed and waddle to the laundry room where I do a load of laundry like… like this isn’t happening. I change my clothes. I pull my hair into a bun and brace myself on the bathroom sink before turning to leave the bathroom, but another contraction begins, squeezing the life out of me. I grip the doorframe, doubling over.
I’m sure I should be prepared for this by now. I read all the books, for fuck’s sake. My husband is a physician! But here I am, ripping the sheets off the bed and stuffing them in a laundry basket. I clean the mattress thoroughly, bracing myself through the increasingly steady contractions.
At exactly 2:00 A.M., my cell phone buzzes on the bedside table, the screen lighting up with Cole’s name and one of our wedding pictures in the background.
He always texts me during his shifts. Little things like what book he read during one of his random breaks, whether or not he managed to get any sleep between patients, and the latest hospital drama. Tonight isn’t any different.
I brace myself against the wall of our bedroom and ride out another back ripping contraction while reading his text about a man who shifted mid-surgery and ended up in the ICU.
I text him back, saying that sounds painful, and within seconds my phone is ringing.
“What’re you doing up?” he asks lightly. Beeps and muffled voices sound behind him–hospital sounds. The sounds of the place I should probably be right now.
“I’m–oh–” I suck in a breath, trying to bite back a moan.
“Misty?” Cole’s voice drops. “Misty, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m just–just doing laundry.”
Cole walks somewhere quieter. “What’s the matter? Somethings–you’re in labor, aren’t you?”
“I can’t be,” I gulp, feeling my way down the darkened hallway toward the kitchen. “I’m not due for three more weeks–” My words fall from my lips in a hiss. This really fucking hurts. Why didn’t I think it would hurt this much? Every class I took, and book I read, went over my head, apparently.
“I knew it,” Cole rasps, sighing through the phone. “I felt a shift yesterday, in our bond. I thought it might be happening soon, but I…. Look, I’m on my way. I’m just–I’m half an hour away–”
“I’m fine,” I bite out, but my body locks up as another contraction soars through me. “I’ll see you in the morning, when your shift’s over.”
Cole goes totally silent for several seconds before asking, “How far apart are your contractions? You can barely talk through them.”
“I don’t know. A minute?”
“You’re having a contraction every minute?” he growls. “Misty–okay, listen. Stay where you are. Your hospital bag is by the door.”
“I have to finish the laundry. There’s still an hour on the cycle.”
The line goes dead. I waddle back into the bedroom and start making the bed like the conversation didn’t happen.
But within minutes of the phone call, the front door bursts open. I’m doubled over the mattress, fighting for my life against the pain and a fitted sheet and can’t find the strength to scream as heavy footsteps thunder down the hallway and a large shadow darkens my doorway.
“What the hell are you doing, Misty?” Sydney growls.
“I’m making my bed!”
“Get in the car!”
“I don’t want to go. He’s not ready. He has three weeks to go!” Tears sting my eyes for the first time.
“You’re fine,” Sydney says calmly, extending his hands in surrender. He’s disheveled from sleep and wearing a plain T-shirt and sweatpants like he just rolled out of bed. “Everything’s okay, but Cole just called me, and you’re going to the hospital right now. I don’t care if you don’t want to go, you can’t just stop this from happening!”
“Where’s Sarah?!” I blubber, shaking from pain and uncertainty. “Why are you here instead of her? I don’t want you, Sydney! Where’s–where’s Mom? Is she home from the Deadlands yet?”
“I will pick you up and carry you to my truck if you refuse to go,” he bites out, stressed, pointing to the bedroom door. “Go.”
But then I’m doubled over again, groaning and hissing in agony as a contraction spreads through my back, stealing my breath.
Sydney whispers a curse under his breath and lays a supportive hand on my back. “You’re going to be okay. Liam was a bit early, too, and he was fine.”
“I’m not r-ready,” I admit, sniffling. “We haven’t even finished setting up his crib. We-we thought we’d be in the new house by now, but we c-can’t move in until next week!”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is getting you to the hospital. Mom got home last night, and she’s going to meet us there–”
“I can’t–”
He straightens me up and takes my face between his hands. “Please, Misty. Don’t put me through delivering this baby on the floor. You’re my little sister.”
I grimace, shoving him away. He points to the door, and I reluctantly waddle out to his truck. He snatches my hospital bag out of my hands and helps me down the steps to the driveway, where we begin a painful fifteen minute drive that should have taken thirty minutes.
He runs every red light and ignores the speed limit completely.
I arch off the seat, groaning curses as our son tries to make his earlier arrival in the freaking truck. “Pull over–”
“I can’t. We’re a minute away from the hospital.”
“Sydney, please! I can’t–I can’t sit like this!”
He revs the engine and sends us flying down a straight, mostly empty highway. The hospital lights shimmer nearby, highlighting a wide parking lot. Relief rushes over me before quickly receding, replaced by fear and guilt.
I hadn’t been staying off my feet. I have a hard time sitting still as it is. Sitting still, lying around and being burdened by my own thoughts and memories gives my brain the opportunity to roil over the war, and everything that happened before, during, and after.
This is my fault, isn’t it?
I’d been doing everything else correctly. I’d seen my midwife regularly. She’s a witch from Eastonia who relocated here and opened her own practice performing traditional healing and midwifery. I’d wanted to deliver at the hospital, however, mostly because Cole works there but also because the majority of the women in my family have had horrific, sometimes deadly, childbirths, and I’m not dumb enough to think that couldn’t happen to me.
But going early wasn’t even in my mind. Aviva was two weeks overdue, for Goddess’s sake.
Sydney says another muffled prayer while I grip the seat and scream through my teeth. He rips into the parking lot so fast my hospital bag slides across the length of the back seat.
A group waits for us at the entrance under the glow of the emergency department lights. A sleek blue sports car rests with two tires on the curb.
“How the hell did she beat us here?” Sydney gasps.
“Mom? Mom!” I shout as she comes into view, wearing her pajamas, a robe, and slippers… like she also rolled out of bed and then sped directly to the hospital in the fastest car my parents have in their arsenal.
Sydney’s truck barely pulls to a stop before my door opens, and Cole appears, looking flushed, his eyes heavy with concern, then relief when he sees me in one piece. He’s wearing light blue scrubs that make his gray eyes pop as he scoops me up without ceremony and carries me into the hospital.
“How far apart are her contractions?” he shouts over his shoulder to Sydney, who’s running in behind us with the hospital bag slung over his shoulder and Mom gripping his other arm.
“A minute, if that.” I peek over Cole’s arm and watch Sydney slip his phone in his pocket.
“You were timing them?”
“I’m about to be a father of three, Misty,” he says, exasperated, “This isn’t my first rodeo. Is her midwife here, yet?”
“We called her but haven’t gotten an answer,” a man I recognize as one of Cole’s colleagues, Carson, says as he rushes forward, motioning for Cole to take a sharp left. “Let’s just get her to maternity. Cole, you’re not the doctor right now, okay? Let me take over–”
“She’s my mate,” Cole snaps, and Carson gives him a thin smile.
“Exactly. You have a job to do, and it’s not delivering this baby.”
An absolutely epic contraction tears through me. I go rigid, biting back a scream as the pain rolls through me, splitting me apart. “Put me down!”
Cole breaks into a run. Somewhere behind us, I hear Mom breathlessly whisper, “This is so exciting!”
Cole carries me into a delivery room, following Carson, who immediately tells the nurses waiting on us that it’s time… literally, right now.
Cole tries to put me on the bed, but I wriggle in his arms. “I can’t–lay down. I can’t! Where’s my midwife?! Where–Where is she? I had–had a plan!”
Cole’s reserved, emotionless doctor’s expression shatters. Worry shines in his eyes, as well as guilt and fear of his own, for me. “I know, honey, I’m so sorry.”
Mom rushes into the room as I allow Cole to lay me down. She kisses my cheek, and I’m instantly comforted.
But Carson, technically Dr. Drier, is now bickering with Cole at a nearby sink, telling him to tend to his wife and let him handle the delivery. “I’m the attending physician in maternity tonight.”
“I’m an attending pediatrician,” Cole argues.
“Then attendto your son when he gets here, which is any minute from now, but your mate needs you, Cole. Put those gloves on, and I’ll chain you to the bed, I swear.”
Cole backs away from the sink when I start whimpering through another contraction, and the nurses begin adjusting my position. I’m wearing a nightgown, but they’re trying to coax me to change into a hospital gown.
I feel a shift. The contraction ebbs into another contraction immediately. I sit up, grabbing my knees. Cole turns to me in shock, pushing past the nurses with Carson by his side.
Mom grabs my hand, her eyes going wide.
Cole catches our son as I bring him into the world in a single push.
I slump against the pillows in shock and relief, watching through hooded eyes as Cole stares down at our baby.
His eyes slowly meet mine before the rush of activity in the room reaches a pitch. His eyes water with unshed tears, and his smile is… heaven.
“I love you, Misty,” he says over the chaos.
“Is he okay?”
Before I can even take a breath, the baby is placed on my chest and roughly dried. He’s small, and hasn’t cried yet, but makes grunting sounds like he’s pissed about being thrust from his warm bed and into the cool, dry air of the hospital.
“Why isn’t he crying?” I gasp.
As if on cue, our son chokes on a cry before erupting with noise that betrays his size. It’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
“Is she okay?” Cole asks Carson. “My mate–”
“She’s totally fine,” Carson says from somewhere between my legs.
Cole is still at my side in somewhat of a haze. I glance through the few inches of space between him and my mom, who’s fawning over me and the baby, and notice Sydney pale white and wide-eyed in the doorway, still holding my hospital bag.
“This is a family record for sure,” Mom laughs, her eyes full of happy tears. “Oh, sweetheart, you did such a good job.”
The next ten minutes are a chaotic blur of activity. I’m changed into a hospital gown and settled in the bed with snacks and the biggest bottle of water with crunchy ice. The baby’s cleaned off, examined, swaddled, and tucked in my arms. Mom gives me huge, wet kisses on my cheeks but refuses to hold the baby, telling me this is my time, but I watch Cole walk her to the door, and Mom tells him in just above a whisper, “My baby just had a baby.”
“She did great,” Cole smiles. “We’ll call you later this morning. You should come back and see them.”
“I will. I know Isaac’s waiting for my call.” She looks at me with happy tears in her eyes. “He’s so worried. He’ll be so happy to hear this went so well. Oh, what's his name? Have you decided?”
The nurses leave the room, skirting around them, leaving us alone.
“Adrian,” I tell her. “His name is Adrian.”
Mom smiles at us, murmuring something about getting a few things monogrammed, and hurries out the door, taking a still shell-shocked Sydney with her.
Cole walks to me, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed. He’s slightly disheveled as I place Adrian in his arms.
“Look at what we made,” I whisper, meeting my mate's eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispers, his voice cracking with emotion as he holds my gaze. “I love you.”
“I love you.”