“You guys want more already?” Marty asks, eyes wide. “Did you hear that, Megan? They already want more. Far out.”
“That’s not what I meant!” I hiss at Otter.
He rolls his eyes. “How was I supposed to know that?”
“We haven’t even had two yet!”
“So much stress,” Megan moans dramatically.
We end up singing.
It’s the most terrible thing in the world.
But Megan’s smiling with her eyes closed, so I deal.
TWO HOURS later, the obstetrician announces Megan’s three centimeters dilated.
“Moving right along,” she hums as she smiles at us and exits the room.
“If you jump up and down, will that help?” I ask.
Marty and Megan burst out laughing.
“Really, Bear?” Otter whispers to me. “That’s what you come up with?”
“I don’t see you offering any solutions!”
“Yeah, nothing is still better than jumping up and down.”
“Another song!” Marty cheers.
“God-fucking-dammit,” I mutter.
FOUR HOURS later, there’s been little progression, and Marty has shoved Otter and me out of the hospital room, telling us to take a walk, because we are killing the vibe. “I’ll call you if anything happens,” he tells us, the most stern I’ve ever seen him. Which means he’s smiling only a little. “Get out for a while, take a breather. I’ll handle things in here. There are a few things I can try to help further things along. Like abdominal lifts. Or sex.”
And then he shuts the door in our faces.
“He better not have sex with our babies,” I mutter.
“You have got to stop phrasing it like that,” Otter says, and he’s pulling me down the hall toward the waiting room. “Let me buy you a cup of disgusting vending machine coffee.”
“You know the way to my heart.”
He grins crookedly at that, squeezing my hand just a little tighter.
It’s going on five o’clock, and I’m thinking I need to turn my cell phone back on, just to make sure everything’s okay, when we get blasted by a wave of noise as soon as we enter the waiting room.
Otter and I both jump back, because everyone is rushing us. Jerry and Alice Thompson. Stephanie and Ian Grant. Anna. Creed, with AJ strapped to his chest. JJ. Izzie. Dom. And the Kid, all of whom are demanding to know what’s going on. Well, maybe not all of them. Because JJ is cackling as he plays some handheld video game, saying, “Take that Overlord Zork, the gemstones of Runia are mine and you shall never have them again! You are my bitch now. Bwahaha!”
Even though I’ll never tell Creed and Anna this, I hope our children are nothing like him. He’s so odd. I try not to applaud as Anna scolds him for language.
“Are we grandparents?” Alice demands. “Was there a third hiding behind the other two? Because that can happen. Did you have triplet babies!”
I don’t know if I should tell her Otter said the same thing or not.
“I don’t know if that actually happens,” her husband tells her.
“Stephanie and I have decided that we will also be grandparents to your kids,” Ian tells Otter. “I hope that’s okay. And if it’s not, well. It’s already been decided.”