#mittysins

The soft click of the door handle caught their attention. The pair of cryptids lifted their heads to look as it opened, the hallway light reflecting green in the mirrors of their eyes.

Newt's familiar scent -- much stronger than his mate's -- overpowered the lavender as he entered the room. Fawn's sinuses tingled with the spicy-sweet aroma of his smell, comparable to sassafras, that indicated his pregnancy as much as the grapefruit-sized swell of his lower belly. Fawn still struggled to describe the scents that were new to her.

The Omega approached her nest and held out the glass of tap water he'd been sent to fetch. Fawn craned her neck and lapped from it, her mouth too parched to obey her command. Her tongue was longer than it had once been, able to bring water to her throat as easily as any straw. She didn't pause to wrap her lips around the edge of the glass until her thirst was mostly quenched.

"Jeez, don't drown," Newt chuckled as Fawn took the drink from his hand.

Asher, the Alpha, got up from his seat and offered it to his mate with a nod of his head.

Fawn gulped down the last of the water and came up panting for air. "Don't tell me what to do," she retorted with a tired, playful grin.

"Don't tell her what to do, babe," Asher said, unable to disguise the smirk on his face as he set the empty glass on the bedside table.

The three shared a brief, quiet laugh.

Fawn's eyelids drifted closed as the room settled back into silence. She shimmied herself deeper into her pile of softness, falling easily into a twilight sleep; at least, for a few more minutes.

A huff of air left Fawn's nose a split second before her brow creased in discomfort. "Ash, start it," she said, curling tighter around her pillow.

"Yes, ma'am." Asher fumbled to unlock his phone and started the timer on his stopwatch app. "Started."

Fawn filled her lungs with air with one long breath and released it as a drawn-out exhale. The contraction coiled itself around her hips and squeezed, growing tighter by the second. The pain grew like a stinging vine around her belly, her ribs, her back, even wrapping around her upper thighs.

With a low groan, Fawn rolled herself onto her back. Her legs fell open at a wider angle than normal -- a sign her hips were loosening in preparation for her large pup to come through. She continued her ritual of slow, deliberate breathing as the contraction continued to climb to its dreaded peak.

Newt leaned into the opening in the tent, enough for him to run a gentle hand over the clammy skin of Fawn's arm. He didn't say anything, but his touch brought her a sense of ease. Even knowing that Asher was in the room, even if she couldn't see him, made her feel better. They'd only known each other a month, but she couldn't imagine surviving labor without them.

Fawn flashed her fangs in a snarl as the contraction reached its apex, the part she dreaded each time. "Ugh!" she growled through her teeth, her head pressed back into the pillow.

Newt's eyes widened when Fawn hooked her hands beneath her knees, drawing her legs up on either side of her belly. "Are you pushing already?"

"She's what?!" Asher gasped in alarm, his face appearing over his mate's shoulder.

"No!" Fawn growled, hardly able to breathe enough to speak. "My legs are about to fuckin' dislocate!"

She could feel the pup pressing its way out, prying open the flesh of her cervix as her womb squeezed it down. The pressure sent stabbing waves of agony between her legs. Her birth canal opened a little more with each millimeter the pup dropped, and now it was putting unbearable pressure on the ball-socket joints of her pelvis.

Fawn grunted in relief as the contraction ebbed. She released her legs, draping them wide apart over her plushies. Thankfully, Newt and Asher's guest bed was queen-sized and allowed her plenty of space to spread out.

"It's done," she announced, so Asher could stop the timer.

"Ooh, getting close," Asher said. "That one was thirty-eight seconds."

Even that short burst of work sent drops of sweat rolling down Fawn's sides. She pulled her tank top over the curve of her belly and tucked the fabric under her swollen breasts. She caressed the sore underside of her bump in long, soothing circles. The skin around her womb was pulled smooth as glass from the weight of the pup inside. She could feel where its surface was gouged by deep, purple stretch marks. Her pup wriggled impatiently beneath her hands, as if able to sense her touch through the thinness of the skin.

"Call me crazy," she said, "but I'm hoping this baby takes its time. It might rip me apart if it tries to break the speed record."

Asher checked the recorded times in his phone. "You'll be fine, it doesn't look like they're in a hurry," he said. "Just stay relaxed and the pup will keep working its way down."

Fawn gave a thumbs-up. "Copy that, Sarge."

"So, guys, are we taking bets?" Newt asked, resting his upper torso inside the tent.

Fawn tilted her head to peer up at him from inside the canyon of her pillow plushie. "On what?"

"Boy or girl," Newt grinned. He propped his chin up on his hand and beamed down at the redheaded wolf woman. "Should we take bets?"

"You boys can if you want," Fawn said.

"Just you versus me, babe," Asher chuckled from somewhere else in the room. "Fawn already knows, that would be cheating."

"No, I don't," Fawn said, quiet and matter-of-fact. She turned her eyes to the little golden lights twinkling over her head. "I didn't know if a doctor would make me contact my mate, so I never went to one."

At the mention of him, the mating scar at the nape of Fawn's neck became hot. She grimaced, able to feel each small wound his teeth had left when he'd inflicted her with the curse of the wolves. It wasn't as strong of a reaction anymore; the pain had at one point been overwhelming.

When she'd taken that first step out of the apartment with the intention to never come back, the mark had burned so intensely she thought she could smell her flesh searing. She was lucky Todd hadn't been home, because he'd no doubt felt the same sensation on the back of his neck -- where he had forced her to mark him as her mate as well. Had he been home, Fawn wouldn't have made it out of the building before he'd realized what she was doing.

"Besides," Fawn added, "I have no idea if I should go to a doctor or a vet now." Her freckled face paled, and she looked back up at Newt. "Shit, is that offensive?"

Newt laughed and leaned in to rub his cheek against her forehead. "Nah."

Fawn smiled as he brushed against her, leaving a bit of his spicy-sweet scent on her skin. She was still adjusting to perceiving the world through scent as much as sight and touch, but she grew more comfortable with it each time the pair scented her. Scent was transforming into language the more she utilized it. Maybe she wasn't sure how to communicate with it, yet; but there was something about it she was starting to understand.

"We'll show you the ropes once you're over the rejection sickness," Asher said, leaning against the nightstand so he could peer into the nest. "So . . . this guy didn't explain any of our lifestyle to you?"

Fawn shook her head. "Not anything us hum-," she paused, pressing her lips into a thin line. "Not anything humans don't already know. Transformation and full moon stuff, basically. He had me sell my silver jewelry before he'd even kiss me. I didn't know werewolves were that sensitive to it."

The boys shared a concerned look.

"Um," Asher cleared his throat, "we aren't. Silver allergies are rare as hell. A few poor bastards had a fatal reaction hundreds of years ago, and humans assumed it was a rule for all of us."

"Good old stereotyping," Newt said.

The lines in Fawn's brow deepened. "That piece of dogshit," she muttered under her breath. "I sold my grandma's pendant for him!"

Goddammit! Why hadn't she thought twice about Todd suddenly needing to "borrow" that money?! Her mating scar throbbed, seeping heat like an open wound where their pair bond had once been. A fresh sweat dampened her brow.

Newt brushed a few stray curls from Fawn's eyes and tucked them behind the point of her ear. "Fuck him. He's a dick."

"Yeah, fuck him," Asher agreed with a frown. His ear twitched as his scowl deepened, knocking his glasses askew. "Alphas are supposed to protect our mates, not take advantage of them."

There was a brief pause. Asher took off his glasses, cleaned them on his shirt, and added: "For what it's worth, Fawn . . . I'm sorry on his behalf."

"Me, too," Newt nodded. "Not as an Alpha, but as a wolf."

Fawn sighed and draped an arm over her eyes. "Thank you for that, boys. It helps . . . at least a little."

She felt like the world's biggest idiot.

When they'd met, she'd been seduced by Todd's hyper-masculine physique and charmed by his overly protective "doting". How special she'd felt, having an Alpha werewolf want her -- an average human woman -- as his mate. In hindsight, being an average human woman was exactly what made him want her. Easy prey.

How quickly she'd regretted her decision to let Todd put her in a mating press. After she'd endured the weeks it took for her anatomy to shift into that of his kind, Todd had convinced her they needed to breed as soon as possible. He wanted a large pack, as many pups as she could give him. It didn't take her long to realize they were the only reason he'd claimed her. Days after leaving him, she'd detected the strange smell of sassafras on her skin -- though she wouldn't know what that meant for two months.

The rejection sickness had masked any symptoms of a pregnancy. The effects were like that of withdrawal: fevers high enough to cause delirium, tremors, nausea, and full-body aches. She'd spent endless days and nights confined to the bed of a sleazy motel room. What carried her through was the knowledge that Todd was feeling just as shitty as she was. Yet, in her darkest moments, Fawn considered going back to him just to make it stop.

Then, her world changed when a fellow wolf woman at the drugstore offered congratulations based on her scent. This prompted her to buy a pregnancy test, and the thought of going back never crossed her mind again.

"Fellas?" Fawn asked, still blindfolding herself with her forearm. "Is a large pack, like . . . a status symbol for y'all or something?"

Asher shrugged. "Not as much as it used to be," he said. "It used to be a big deal in the past, like before we had the treaty with humans. That was because our packs needed the numbers for defense. But now? Not as much."

"Except maybe for those freakishly traditional families," Newt chimed in.

"Mmm," Fawn hummed in acknowledgement. She placed her other hand on the upper swell of her belly and gave it a thoughtful rub. "Well, this baby is mine. I'm not giving birth for the sake of some insecure asshole. This is my baby."

"Damn right it is," Newt grinned, his blue eyes glittering in the low light.

After a few seconds of silence, Fawn's limp-hanging hand curled into a fist. "Mmm, Ash . . . " Her voice trailed off into a chesty groan.

Newt looked over at his mate. "Ash, start it."

Asher pulled out his phone with a nod. "Starting."

Newt massaged Fawn's shoulder as she once again pulled back her legs. The pressure in her hips was immense, and the contraction was heaving the baby down with unholy force. Fawn pulled harder on her knees until she felt her pelvis widen, the bones drifting apart like tectonic plates.

"Breathe, Fawn," Newt gently reminded. "You're holding it."

Fawn hissed out her breath like a deflating tire. "God, it's coming down," she groaned. She shut her eyes and whined as the pup pressed harder against her cervix.

"Change position," Asher offered, bending down to see inside the nest. "Let gravity help you out."

Fawn released a high-pitched whimper. "My hips . . . my hips hurt."

"Here, hold on." Newt reached around Fawn and pulled out another of her oversized Squishmallows from the pile. He left his chair and climbed onto the bed, crawling through the opening of the tent with the plushie in-hand. "Sit up, love."

Fawn reluctantly let her legs fall. Her bones were lead. With Newt's help, she got to her knees and straddled herself atop the large pillow plushie so her hips could remain open.

"There, that's better!" Asher said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. His phone screen reflected in his lenses, revealing the contraction had lasted twenty seconds already.

Fawn bent forward onto all-fours, rhythmically dipping her hips into the pillow as the pain climbed higher than it had before. The Omega at her side dug the heel of his hand into her lower back, allowing Fawn to rock back against the counter-pressure. Her deep breathing wavered, each inhale growing shallower until the wolf woman was full-on panting.

"Calm down, you're doing fine," Newt lulled, ghosting his claws over her spine. "Deep breaths, like you were doing."

Sweat appeared in shining beads on Fawn's reddened face, dampening the frizzy curls around her temples. "I can't," she gasped. All four limbs trembled, fatigued muscles giving up the last of their strength. "I can't . . . I need to lie down."

Fawn sank chest-first into the fox plushie, arms unable to support her weight. Her tongue dipped in and out of her mouth as she failed to control of her breathing. Her fingers sank into the duvet, claws tearing holes in the fabric.

The end of the tent unzipped, creating an arch-shaped door that Asher climbed in through. While Newt continued to knead Fawn's back, Asher laid himself beside her.

"Hey, Mama, look at me," he crooned, his face appearing in the corner of her vision. When her hazel eyes met his, he said: "You are owning this! There's no need to get freaked out. You're too tough for labor to beat. Take a deep breath for us, alright?"

Fawn wet her lips and maintained eye contact with the Alpha while she drew in a big breath.

"Good!" Asher smiled, patting her shoulder. "Now let it out and make the next one even deeper. Show that pain who's boss!"

She obeyed, but mid-inhale she choked on air. With a canid yowl, Fawn pressed herself against the Alpha's body. Her hips ground against the pillow, as if it would cushion the force of her pelvis being forced apart.

"Ugh, gravity's helping too much!" Fawn moaned into Asher's shirt. "This pup is about to fall outta me!"

"That's a good thing!" Asher encouraged, draping his arm over her and motioning for his mate to lie down beside them. "You're making progress. The pup will be here before you know it!"

Fawn's hips finally settled as the contraction eased off, but she still felt unable to move. Her pelvis sat wide open, and the hefty weight of the pup was sinking deep inside it -- even without the contraction.

“Augh, fuck,” she moaned, the sound rumbling in her chest. “Fuck . . . the baby feels low. It feels so fucking low!"

"Ash?" Newt asked as he rearranged the pillows to better support the three of them. "Are you still timing?"

Asher caressed Fawn's thigh as she shifted to support her upper body against the mountain of Squishmallows Newt had piled up. Newt reclined on his side beside her, flashing her a bright smile -- his fangs always hung over his lower lip when he smiled.

"No, I think we're just feeling it out now," Asher said. He'd left his phone charging on the nightstand, just in case they needed it. "I think we're 'reaching a checkpoint' as it were."

Newt rolled his eyes. "Gamers."

Fawn snuggled into the pillow mountain, trying in vain to get comfortable. It wasn't as dramatic as what they showed on television, but Fawn knew exactly what the hot rush of fluid was as it soaked the pillow between her legs.

"Umm, hey . . ." She nudged the pillow aside, revealing ribbons of cloudy water running down her inner thighs. "I think it's time to lose the shorts."

Asher pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "And checkpoint reached!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For five hours, no one left that tent. The room grew darker as the evening gave way to the early morning hours of pre-dawn. The boys stayed at either side of the laboring wolf woman, holding her steady in positions that allowed her pup to ease down with gravity.

Between contractions, the three werewolves lay side-by-side in tranquil silence. The sweat on Fawn's brow would dry, her feverish body would cool, but the warmth of two other bodies prevented the chills from returning. That quiet peace would be broken when Fawn vocalized during a new contraction, signaling the boys to sit her up and widen her stance.

Fawn was growing restless, wanting to switch positions several times during every contraction: squatting against the headboard, kneeling against one guy or the other, or falling into a half-squat in a pile of her plush pillows. The longer the night wore on, the more fidgety the laboring mother became.

At around four in the morning, as the trio rested together beneath the fairy lights, Fawn suddenly spoke:

"Is the cradle ready?"

"Hmm?" Asher sat up and readjusted his glasses.

"Is the cradle ready?" Fawn repeated. There was a glint of urgency in her eyes, although her tone was soft and even.

The fold-out mesh bassinet was visible from inside the nest, placed against the opposite wall. The pup's first outfit was already laid out atop the blanket lining the mattress -- a cotton quilt with embroidered rubber duckies that Newt had donated from the stash he was buying for his own pup.

After a quick glance, Asher responded: "Yep, it's ready and waiting."

"Can you grab some extra blankets or something?" Fawn pleaded. She gradually drew her legs up until her heels touched the underside of her thighs. "Just anything that's soft."

Newt sat himself up and gave his mate a knowing look. "Babe? You think this is that 'final nesting' the baby books talked about?"

Asher's eyes widened. "Oh, crap. It might be."

"What?" Fawn asked. She suddenly realized she couldn't remember what either of the boys had just said -- she wasn't fully aware of what was going on around her. It was so, so hard to focus on anything other than the pounding pressure that had come to rest in the curve of her tailbone.

The mated pair gave each other a nod.

"Ash and I have been reading books about pups like crazy this month," Newt explained in a lighthearted tone. "'Final nesting' is just what your brain does right before the pup is ready to come out."

Asher grabbed the corner of the topmost duvet and rolled it towards them until it became a padded cushion. He carefully slid it beneath Fawn and said: "Yep, it's an instinct. Got to make sure the pup has a safe place to land, you know."

Now it was Fawn's turn to go wide-eyed. "Wait . . . wait, is it happening?" she gasped, her head shooting up off the pillows.

"Maybe," Newt said. "You'll know if it is." He placed a pillow over his torso to protect his belly and scooted behind Fawn to support her into a squat.

"And if it isn't, then we'll just wait some more," Asher concluded. "Don't try to bear down if you don't need to."

Fawn nodded, gulping down the dryness in her throat. She had no idea what to expect with the next contraction. If the monstrous pressure she was feeling hadn't triggered her body to push by then . . . oh, God above, what was about to happen to her?

"I don't . . . don't know if I'm ready for this," she muttered.

Newt leaned in and rubbed his cheek against the side of her neck. "You're as ready as you'll ever be," he said. He intertwined his clawed fingers with her own.

Fawn didn't feel the next contraction as pain, only as a familiar tightness wrapping around her womb. All other sensation was snuffed out . . . massacred . . . left bleeding in the streets! . . . by the wicked downward thrust of her pup moving through her effaced cervix. There was nothing holding that baby in her womb any longer, and it was not waiting another minute to leave.

"Oh, my God!" she screamed -- out of fear more so than pain. Her hips jerked back, trying to escape the demonic pressure burning inside.

Newt squeezed her hands -- his claws never marking her skin. "You feel it?"

"Yes!" Fawn cried, her body shuddering under the hellish urge to push.

"Go with it," Asher encouraged, placing his hand on her knee. "Let's meet your pup."

Fawn held her breath and gave a shallow, hesitant first push. She wasn't sure if she was using the correct muscles, but it felt . . . how could she describe it? . . . it felt like she was doing something. A few seconds of strain later, she let up with a sharp yelp. Yes, she'd been doing it right. That slight nudge had sent the pup rushing forward.

"It's moving . . ." was all she had time to say before her body demanded she continue her efforts -- and double them!

Those few millimeters of progress kicked her urge to push into overdrive. Fawn braced her weight against Newt, put chin to chest, and bore down with every ounce of force she could. The crown of the head pressed deeper against her innermost walls with a fiery, thorny tug. The sensation of her baby moving through her after so many passive hours of labor was startling -- yet beyond rewarding.

Had her eyes been open to see, Fawn would have observed Asher's tender smile as he watched primal focus harden her features.

"Just like that, Mama," Asher praised, again stroking her thigh. "Don't hold back, give it your all!"

Sweat trailed down her flushed skin. Unable to hold the push any longer, Fawn emptied her lungs with a harsh grunt.

"It's already hurting me," she growled through closed fangs. Her voice strained as, for just a few horrible seconds, she resisted the urge to push. "Goddamn, this is gonna suck!"

Newt laid his chin on Fawn's shoulder as she sank into another deep push. "Whatever you feel, don't fight it," he offered evenly. "Your body knows what it's doing, Fawn. Listen to what it's telling you to do."

Fawn's ears pressed back against her head as her hips dipped lower to the duvet. She felt a small trickle of fluid drip from her labia, but the flow stopped as soon as she stopped pushing. A groan escaped the back of her throat as the contraction eased off and she was able to relax.

"That was great," Newt praised, unlacing their fingers and letting Fawn have her hands back. "You got the hang of it right off the bat."

Fawn sighed and balled the duvet beneath them in her claws. Her chest rose and fell quickly, and her pulse hammered in her neck. Any sense of physical comfort was gone now, even between contractions. She knew there would be no peace for her until this pup was out and in her arms . . . but God only knew when that would happen. God only knew if that would happen! The pup was barely inside her birth canal and Fawn was already terrified that it was going to get stuck.

"What if . . . what if I can't get it out?" she panted. Her lower back was screaming, so she shifted her hips forward. It didn't help. "What do we do if I can't get it out?!"

"Hey, hey, don't think like that," Newt helped Fawn recline a bit further against him. He steadied her in his arms, his hands gently massaging the curves where her belly met her ribcage. "There's no doubt in our minds that you can do this!"

"And I'm down here if you need a little extra help," Asher said. He carefully took Fawn's leg and draped it over his lap, helping to open her hips now that she was in a more reclined position. "We won't let anything happen to you or your pup, Fawn. That's a promise."

"You're safe here," Newt said in a low, soothing tone. He continued to apply soft pressure to her sides and back, kneading over her sore body as if smoothing out a delicate fabric.

Fawn never doubted for a second that she was in loving hands. She dreaded to think where she would be right now if the pair hadn't opened their home to her. Without their kindness, chances were that she'd be delivering her baby in a motel bathroom or on top of a cot in a homeless shelter. These two had given her the ultimate gift: a warm, safe place to give birth. She owed her pup's life to them.

"I know," Fawn said, snuggling down further into the nest. "I don't want to be anywhere else right now."

Newt bent down and pressed a kiss to Fawn's hairline. "Keep listening to your body. Don't rush what it's trying to do."

Fawn nodded, puffing out a breath as she felt the next contraction roll up from her back to her belly. "Okay . . . let's go."

She took in a slow lungful of air, waited for the contraction to build in strength, and pushed.

Her loosened joints spread easily for the pup's skull as it squeezed its way down her passage. It became an endless pattern: Fawn would push, the head would squeeze down, and her pelvic bones would spread over its shape as it passed beneath them. She could feel the rhythm of the changes.

Push. Squeeze. Spread.

Rest.

Push. Squeeze. Spread. Spread.

Rest.

Push. Squeeze. Spread. Spread. Spre-OW!

OW! OW! Oh, fuck! Now it was so too big! Her hips were filled to the maximum, her canal stretched wide around a huge pair of shoulders as they slipped from her womb. She could feel her labia bulging from between her legs -- and oh, God, they ached! There was nothing but a layer of her skin holding the pup in, and it felt like a bubble of gum about to burst!

But she couldn't stop pushing. Not now, not when everything was raw and stretched and open and hurting so goddamn bad! Fawn curled her toes into the mattress and wailed as she threw herself harder into pushing. Her voice grew louder as she felt the inflamed skin between her legs starting to open.

"Good job, Mama! Here it comes!" Asher cried, his voice raised to be heard over Fawn's roar of effort.

Asher had his eyes glued to the pale, wet sac pressing out of Fawn each time her body strained. He'd read in their books that it was common for werewolf pups to be born with their membranes wrapped around them. That was fine, he just had to be prepared to remove it.

A tiny spurt of fluid leaked out from around the sac as the head began to stretch the skin of the perineum. The pup's size seemed to be keeping most of its sac unruptured, the fluid too pressurized to leave the birth canal. Asher furrowed his brow but said nothing.

Of course, Newt took notice of his mate's unease. He swallowed the unease in his chest, and scented Fawn's hair with his cheek again in the hopes it would distract her.

"Ash sees the head," he crooned. "Keep going, you're pushing like a pro!"

With renewed vigor, Fawn gave into her body's needs. Asher waited until a few centimeters of the solid white membrane stretched open Fawn's lips, then he placed his index finger against the bulging sac to gauge how much fluid was inside. He felt the semi-solid squish of the pup's head just beneath the film, but his finger pad felt the swish of water when he pressed down. That wasn't a very good sign, but Asher still felt confident that he could handle it.

"I'm going to help you out a little, okay?" Asher told Fawn, cupping his hand over the crowning pup. "Focus on pushing, and I'll help you open up. I'll go slow."

Newt once again sensed Asher's unease and made it his mission to protect Fawn from sensing it, too. "Pup's almost out, Fawn," he said as he gave her shoulders a brief hug. "It'll be out quicker with Ash helping you. Just take a deep breath and let yourself stretch."

"I'm trying," Fawn whimpered. "I'm trying."

As Fawn bore down against the pup, Asher ran his fingers against the sides of her lips. He nudged her skin open bit by bit around the sac, watching as it stretched from a small oval to a wide circle over the course of several minutes. Asher cringed as he saw the skin of her labia discolor from a raw red to an almost beet purple with the width of the head.

Fawn, meanwhile, had fallen completely taciturn. Aside from wolfish growls and whimpers, she made no efforts to express her pain verbally. Her focus had shifted solely to bearing through the ordeal, working with her body to bring it to a swift end.

"Keep going, we're almost there!" Asher cheered. He had his hands positioned at the apex of her inner thighs, supporting the tight skin as Fawn pushed the head to its widest point.

Fawn shuddered and let her head fall back on Newt's chest. Her mind was a mess of black static as the pup's shoulders ground against her pubic bone. She arched her spine as the pup ceased to move for one heart-stopping moment. Then, in a sudden lurch, the sac-covered head popped free into Asher's waiting hands.

"Awesome! Awesome, Fawn!" Newt cheered, peering over her shoulder as much as he could. He could see the white membrane resting in his mate's palm. "Babe, you got it?"

Asher nodded. "I've got it, don't worry."

Without drawing attention to it, Asher took the claw of his thumb and carefully -- oh-so-carefully -- punctured the membrane at the base of where he felt the pup's neck should be. A quiet sploosh filled the nesting tent as amniotic fluid rushed over Asher's hands. He hooked his claw inside the tear and slowly peeled the sac over the pup's head.

There wasn't much hair on the pup's head -- unusual, though not uncommon -- but that wasn't what Asher was looking for. He craned his neck at a painful angle until he could catch a glimpse of the pup's face. When he saw it, he paled. The features were predictably swollen, but the puffy lips were hanging open and dripping a thick yellowish mucus. Asher thanked the stars above that he and his partner had read up about whelping -- for he was able to recognize the tell-tale symptom of waterlogged lungs.

The mates locked eyes with each other and nothing else needed to be said or done. They both understood.

"This is it, love," Newt said, leaning in to help Fawn hold her legs apart. "This next contraction is going to be the one."

Fawn's jaw gaped like a suffocating fish, but finally her voice obeyed her command: "Is my baby okay?"

Oh, hell. She must've smelled the pheromones of their stress. Newt had been hoping she wouldn't understood what the scent of fear was, yet.

Newt smiled at her and brushed her sweat-plastered hair away from her eyes. "They're fine, they just need some extra help."

"When you push, I'll give them a little tug," Asher said. "It's going to hurt, but it'll be over before you know it."

Fawn squeezed her eyes shut. "Can't hurt any worse than this," she mumbled. "Just do it."

The boys were expecting the horrific scream Fawn released when Asher began guiding out the first shoulder, but it still made their sensitive ears ring.

"You're so strong, Fawn!" Newt said into her ear. He felt her legs trying to close against the pain, and he had to pause to pull them back apart. "I know it hurts, but you're handling it so well! We're so proud of you!"

Asher kept his focus locked on delivering the pup as fast and as safe as possible. One hand supported the pup's body while the other pulled down on the emerging shoulder.

"Come on, little guy," Asher muttered under his breath. "Come on, you can do it."

With an audible pop of Fawn's hip joints -- and another yowl from the wolf woman herself -- the pup's first shoulder slipped free. Asher wasted zero time in hooking his thumb under the tiny arm and continuing his steady, gentle tug.

A rather disgusting squelch accompanied the pup as it slid onto the duvet. The remains of the membrane bunched around its feet as Asher scooped it into his hands. The body was grey and limp, and all three heartbeats stalled.

"What's wrong?!" Fawn cried. "What's wrong with it?!" She reached for her baby on instinct, but Newt held her back.

"It's okay!" he said, adjusting himself to block her veiw of Asher and the baby. "It's okay, I swear! Asher's taking care of it."

Newt stroked her sweaty face with the back of his hand, doing anything he could think of to soothe her. It didn't stop the tears from flooding the exhausted mother's eyes.

Behind his mate's back, Asher brought the pup's face to his lips. His mouth easily covered the nose and mouth of the newborn, and he gently sucked the sour-tasting fluid out of its airway. Asher spit the gunk into his sleeve and repeated the action, rubbing his thumb against the baby's chest as he did.

It was a process that lasted less than twenty seconds, but to all three werewolves it felt like eternity. But eternity ended when the pup sucked in a deep, squeaking breath. The sound of its first cry was shrill, but to the trio it sounded like singing.

Asher couldn't help but start crying as the little body he'd resurrected wiggled to life in his hands. "Here he is!" he said, voice wavering with joyful tears.

Newt sat back immediately, allowing Fawn to see the baby alive and well in Asher's arms.

"Here's our boy!" Asher announced, laying the crying baby over his mother's heart.

Through the haze of her tears, Fawn looked over every detail of her little boy. She saw the layer of damp fuzz covering his skin, the points on his pink, folded-over ears, and the coating of protective skin over his miniscule claws. She thanked whatever power was out there for that last detail, because such tiny needles would've been horrible to feel coming out.

"Sweetheart," she told the baby, wrapping her arms around him, "don't make a habit outta scaring me like that."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Is he already nursing again?" Newt asked as he placed the glass of water on the nightstand.

"He eats like a horse," Fawn chuckled, adjusting the nursing pillow under her baby. Jacob was the name she had settled on.

The sun was coming up now, filling her bedroom with a soft white light. Asher was on the floor, disassembling the nesting tent. It would be taken out again in a few months for Newt to use, but the Alpha was determined to Tetris the pieces correctly into their box.

Jacob was an aggressive nurser. Three hours old and this was his third time demanding his mother's milk. Newt and Asher insisted such an appetite was normal for a larger werewolf pup, but Fawn wasn't too thrilled to learn she was going to get even less sleep than she anticipated with a new baby.

Fawn quickly drained the glass of water. She wasn't sure if she would ever feel not-thirsty again. "So, Newt," she said, "I didn't scare you into wanting a C-section, did I?"

"Nah, not at all." Newt laid down on the bed beside Fawn, propping himself against the Squishmallow pile. "If you could get him out, I'm pretty sure I'll be okay."

Newt pet the thin strands of hair on Jacob's head. The newborn swiped a clumsy, mitten-covered fist over his head with a teeny-tiny growl. All three adults stopped and stared.

"Was that him?!" Asher asked from the floor.

"Yeah . . ." Newt said, withdrawing his hand. "He's very protective of his food."

Asher almost fell over laughing. "That's Alpha behavior if I've ever seen it!"

"How do you guys even determine that stuff?" Fawn asked. "Is it a sex thing?"

"Eh, a bit," Newt shrugged, "but it's also a personality thing." He tickled the folded tip of Jacob's soft ear, and got the same response as before.

"Ow!" Fawn jerked as her son bit down on her breast. "Stop annoying him, or I'm biting you, too!"

"Sorry," Newt chuckled.

"I can't thank you boys enough for this," Fawn said. "This werewolf shit is all sorts of weird for me, and . . . now I know for certain that Jacob wouldn't have been alright if you weren't with me."

"That's what packs do," Asher said, re-folding a segment of nylon tarp. "We look out for each other."

"Do we even . . . " Fawn stopped herself mid-sentence and looked away.

Newt grinned and touched his forehead to Fawn's temple. "I don't know. What do you think?"

Once I started to recover, that's exactly what I did. On a night when Suri refused to stop crying, I got up and poked my head through the cracked nursery door. 

Tess was there, looking exhausted and defeated as she held Suri on her shoulder. That baby had been screaming in her ear for at least half an hour. She jumped when she turned and saw me in the doorway. 

"Hi, Tess," I said with a sympathetic smile. 

"Hey, doll," Tess sighed, continuing to bounce Suri up and down while she paced the room. She spoke a little louder than she needed to, likely 'cause she couldn't hear herself think. "I'm sorry she woke 'ya. I got no idea what 'ta do." 

She sounded like she'd given up. This was how she was spending her night, and she'd resigned herself to it. 

I thought about waking Ray, but his paternity leave ended in the morning. He had to be up in a few hours for his civil engineering job. Even with what little I knew about salary work, I knew eight weeks of unpaid leave for a brand-new baby was bullshit. Ray would've taken the full twelve weeks, but the city was jumping down his throat about finishing the blueprints for an overpass project on-time. Tess was about to be left alone with a two-month-old for the sake of ten fewer minutes of traffic. That wasn't fair. 

"Tess, lemmie take her for a while," I said, walking into the room. "You need a break." 

"It's fine," Tess insisted. "She'll calm down . . . eventually." 

I held out my arms. "Tess. Give 'er." 

The purple bags under Tess's eyes made her look twice her age, and her pale yellow hair was a rat's nest hanging down her back. She was at her wit's end. "Okay." 

Suri weighed almost nothing as I settled her against my shoulder. It still amazed me how small babies were. They seemed so much smaller when you actually got to hold them. 

"Hey, what's wrong?" I asked Suri. My ear started to ring as she wailed into it, her cries high-pitched and distressed. I started patting her back like I'd seen her parents do. "What's wrong, baby girl? What's got you so upset?" 

Tess collapsed into the glider in the corner of the nursery, her hands rubbing circles into her temples. "I've changed her. I've fed her. I've prayed over her. I've got no idea what my own baby needs!" 

"Well, I've got no idea, either," I shrugged, my toes digging into the soft sherpa rug by the crib. I continued patting Suri's back. Her feet were pressing against my chest, as if she were trying to pull herself upright. 

"But I'm supposed 'ta know!" Tess whimpered. She ran her fingers through the knots in her hair. "I'm her mama! Mamas are supposed 'ta know what 'ta do, but I can't even calm her down!" 

"You're not a bad mama, Tess," I said, offering her a smile -- despite the continued screaming in my ear. "Trust me, I know what a-." 

The screaming was cut short with a small 'gurk', and I froze when a wet glob of spit-up slithered down my back. 

". . . think I figured it out . . ." I said, my smile now pinched.  

Suri grumbled, and I carefully held her out in front of me. Her face was still red, but her expression was pure baby bliss -- milky spittle on her chin and all. 

"Did you have a tummy ache, baby girl?" I asked. "Is that what was wrong?" 

Tess shot up from the glider, sending it bumping into the wall. "Oh, Fawn, I am so sorry!" she said, taking her daughter out of my hands. She took the burp cloth off her shoulder, as if suddenly remembering it was there, and handed it to me. "Here, clean 'yaself up." 

"S'alright," I chuckled, cringing as I wiped up the gobby mess. "I've got other shirts. At least I got her to stop crying." 

Tess looked down at the baby in the crook of her arm, and then back up at me. "Wanna try a hand at gettin' her 'ta sleep?" 

Long story short, that's how I found my new job as the Tariq's live-in babysitter.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wasn't expecting to do surrogacy again, at least not for a long while. The Tariqs were paying me a decent wage for domestic work and were kind enough to not charge me rent -- so long as I was saving a certain amount of the money each week. The last post I ever made on the surrogate agency's forums was an announcement celebrating Suri's successful home birth. After that, I let my profile go dark.

Not only did hiring me allow the Tariqs to keep their promise of helping me on my feet, it also gave them an extra set of hands around the house while Ray was at work. Tess and I worked out a system where I would work on smaller tasks while she took care of the most pressing matters. If she was feeding Suri, I was cleaning the kitchen. If she was cooking dinner, I was changing a diaper. If she had to do yardwork, I was keeping Suri entertained.  

I learned to prepare formula, wash bottles, change diapers, and play peek-a-boo like a pro in no time. 

Bath time was always a tag-team effort, though. Suri was a splasher, and her favorite bath toy was a rubber turtle called "Squirta Turta", so we usually ended up as soaked as she was. 

When Suri was being weaned off formula, we made homemade baby food with the vegetables in the garden. Turns out, placenta makes a great fertilizer. I wondered if Mom had ever used it in her flower beds -- she'd had five of them to work with by the time all of us kids were born. I wished I could ask her. I wished I could ask her about a lot of things. I also wished Suri could eat her mashed squash without trying to wear the bowl as a hat, but I didn't get that wish, either. 

This was my life for two wonderfully chaos-filled years, and I was mostly content with it.

Mostly.

I wanted to go to college. That was always my plan for after high school, but . . . plans had obviously changed. My grades hadn't been anything to brag about, so I knew from the start I'd have to pay my own way through. I had two years' worth of savings, but I didn't want to dip into it, yet. That money was meant to be the down payment on a house someday. What would be the point of spending all my money on school if I'd be right back to square one afterward? That wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to get my degree and start my life over -- I'd been waiting long enough.

After sitting down with Ray and breaking down the costs of school, I realized I barely had enough to pay for one term. There were some small scholarships I could apply for here and there, but I wasn't about to rely on winning them. There were hundreds of smarter students out there vying for the same pile of money. What chance did I have?

I mulled it over for several days without saying a word to anyone, but eventually I made up my mind. When I did, Tess was the first person I told:

"I'm gonna get pregnant again."

I announced it out of the blue as I was helping Tess with the after-dinner dishes. She was at the kitchen sink, washing. I was at the counter, drying.

The steel wool in her hand scraped to a halt. "Pardon?"

I hunched my shoulders a bit as I toweled off a plate. "I'm gonna find another couple that needs to 'rent a room'. It'll be able to pay for my degree. In full. All four years."

Tess continued washing, but she didn't acknowledge what I'd said at all.

"So . . . what do you think?" I prodded, setting stacks of dishes in the cabinet.

Tess grimaced into the soapy water, concentrating way too much on the pan she was scrubbing. "Shug, I dunno," she said. "Do 'ya really wanna do that 'ta 'yaself so soon?"

"Whatd'ya mean 'so soon'?" I scoffed. "Suri's up toddling around the house. Isn't that when most moms get pregnant again?"

"'Ya ain't a mom, yet, Fawn," Tess said, her tone lovingly blunt -- the tone that can only be learned by disciplining a toddler.

I flinched a little, but I crossed my arms over my chest to hide it. All she'd done was state a fact, but it still bit.

"I'd like to be," I mumbled. I gazed out the kitchen window and saw Ray out in the backyard with Suri. He was blowing bubbles, and she was reaching up to grab them with high-pitched screams of laughter. She chased them as they swooped lower to the ground, and then stomped on them with her tiny flip-flops when they touched the grass. "Someday."

"I know, doll. That's why I'm concerned." Tess set the pan on the drying rack. "Pregnancies are risky. Wouldn't 'ya rather have as few of 'em as possible?"

"I've had two and they went just fine," I said with a shrug. "I'm young, Tess! Isn't now the best time to use what I got? I can charge more, now that I've got experience. No student debt and money left over to save for a house! Trade nine months in exchange for the rest of my life? How could I pass that up?!"

Tess didn't say anything for a long time, she just dunked a chili pot in the dishwater and started scrubbing. I stood there in uncomfortable silence until she said:

"School can wait, 'ya know."

"No, it can't!" I protested.

"Ray and I can pay what 'ya need for classes when we start tryin' again," Tess said. "What on Earth's the point?"

"Point is," I huffed, leaning my hip against the counter, arms still crossed over my chest, "I'm almost twenty-four and I've got nothin' to show for it!"

"Fawn, 'ya gotta think about-."

"I'll still be able to help you guys out, Tess," I added. "Don't worry about that."

"It's not us I'm worryin' about," was her deadpan response.

It was frustrating as hell, but I wasn't too angry at her. I knew why she wasn't a fan of the idea.

The three of us had recently discussed growing their family in the future. The Tariqs wanted to wait until Suri was a little more independent before welcoming a second baby, so that plan was at least two more years out.

Following that conversation, we'd decided not to return to the surrogate agency we used the first time. The agency was helpful with the fine print and legal stuff, but the Tariqs had not been too thrilled to learn that a desperate, homeless, childless young woman had been allowed to become a surrogate of theirs.

"I can do it independently," I said, pleading my case. "I know how to be careful."

Tess turned to lock eyes with me. "Fawn . . . I just need 'ta know you're doin' it for the right reasons. I don't like the idea of 'ya going through all that for nothing but a stack'a cash."

"It's not just for money" I insisted. "I wouldn't go through it again for anyone, not even you guys, if I didn't find it meaningful."

Tess didn't seem any more at ease with my promises. "I just don't want 'ya health 'ta suffer. If 'ya do this, you're choosin' 'ta put 'ya body through a lot in such a short time."

I didn't argue. She was right. "I know."

Tess turned back to the sink, sighing while she rinsed out the pot. My toes curled inside my shoes.

"I want to help another couple while I still have the chance," I said, trying to justify my decision -- partially to myself. I could sense how strong Tess's disapproval was, and it was giving me serious second thoughts. "If I can't be a parent right now, I want to make it possible for other people to be parents. It makes the wait feel . . . less long."

Tess dried her hands on her long bohemian skirt and turned to gently hold my shoulders. "Doll, it's 'ya own choice. Ray and I can't stop 'ya from doin' whatever it is 'ya wanna do."

I nodded, my eyes cast down. I didn't need their permission, nor had I been asking for it, but some support would've been -- .

"Just know that we'll be here 'ta help 'ya," Tess continued. "Anything 'ya need, just ask. If you're gonna do this, I want 'ya as healthy and happy as possible."

I nodded again, this time with a smile on my face. "I'd appreciate that."

Tess wrapped me in a hug. "But please, shug," she added, patting my back, "don't put 'yaself through too much."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Easy there, doll. I've got'cha."

Tess held my curls back as I wretched into a blue emesis bag. I'd started growing my hair out in the months it took for this surrogacy to be arranged. I hadn't been thinking ahead.

I'd thought I was in the clear after I had to have Tess pull over on the highway so I could vomit up breakfast, but the antiseptic smell of the hospital kicked up my nausea again. I'd made it through the halls, but by the time I'd sat on the exam table my stomach had enough.

I choked on thick saliva and spit a mouthful of colorless bile into the bag. "Okay . . . okay, I'm good now," I spluttered as I lifted my head. I cinched the bag and handed it to the technician without looking them in the eye. "Sorry."

"Don't be," the tech laughed, "morning sickness is par for the course in here. I'll be right back, just make yourself comfortable." They dragged the privacy curtain closed behind them as they left the room.

Tess wet a paper towel in the hand sink for me. My skin was clammy and cold even before I wiped the towel across my face -- so I wasn't left feeling any better. My hands had a tremor so deep inside the tendons it registered as numbness. I raked my front teeth over my tongue to scrape away the acidic taste.

I hadn't really needed that blood test. I'd known the IVF had worked when I woke up clinging for dear life against the Earth's rotation. My head hadn't stopped spinning since, and it was two damn weeks later. The doctor overseeing my IVF had sent me in for a six-week ultrasound -- which was earlier than I'd ever had one done before -- because my hormone levels were "suspiciously high" this time around. Whatever that meant.

I'd been pumped full of fertility drugs like a chicken with GMOs for a solid four months by that point. No shit my hormones were off the charts, especially now that I was pregnant.

"It's never been this bad," I groaned, coughing on the burn in my throat.

"Yeah, that's why the doctor wants 'ya in here," Tess said with a chuckle.

"I hate it," I scowled. "I want the old morning sickness back."

"Each time is different," Tess said. "I had it once or twice before, but when I was pregnant with Ravi it never really went away." Any time Tess mentioned her angel baby, a little bit of the light left her eyes -- and I saw it happen again right there in that ultrasound room.

Tess helped me pull off my jeans and tucked my discarded underwear inside the back pocket for me. I covered my hips with the paper blanket just before the tech came back into the room.

"Looks like we're ready to start!" they chirped, taking their seat between me and the rolling ultrasound cart.

"Hang on a sec," I said, pulling up the FaceTime app on my phone. "The parents really wanna see the first ultrasound."

"Ah," the tech said with an understanding nod, "is this a surrogate situation?"

"My second time," I said with a proud grin. I pointed at Tess, who was folding my pants over the back of a chair. "I carried her baby first. Most amazing thing I've ever done."

Tess beamed at me. She was smiling, but the shadows on her face were a bit deeper than normal.

"Really now!" The tech exclaimed, keeping their peppy tone as they typed my info into the computer. "It's rare I see surrogate mothers as young as you. Bless your heart!"

"She's a trooper, that's for damn sure," Tess said, "but, God love 'er, she's been so sick."

"I'm sure your care provider can prescribe something for that at your follow-up ," the tech told me. "It won't feel this bad for much longer, sweetheart."

"It's worth it, though," I said. My phone bubbled with the ringtone of an outgoing video call. "These guys will be amazing dads."

The tech smiled at me. "I have such respect for traditional surrogates. That's a lot of sacrifice."

"Oh, no," I corrected them with a small hand wave. "This isn't traditional. These are the bio parents."

I hadn't willy-nilly accepted the first eager couple I'd found online. I'd put half a year's worth of thought into carrying this pregnancy. The Tariqs always gave me my birthday off, and I'd spent that entire day talking to prospective parents. I wanted to prove to them that I was taking this seriously; if I was doing this just for the money, I wouldn't have cared whose baby I carried. I wanted to vet my options and choose a couple that I well and truly felt honored in helping -- and the Gillespies were exactly that.

My phone screen flashed with a mixture of bright pixels before the video came into focus. An odd pair of men sat beside each other in what appeared to be either a kitchen or a dining room -- perhaps it served as both, they lived in a small condo. One was a tall, tanned athlete with a dark stubbly beard and a sculpted figure rippling beneath his loose-fitting tank top. That was Silas. The other was a willowy, ramen-haired man with thick blue octagon frames on his glasses and the quote, "It's only a passing thing, this shadow" from The Two Towers tattooed on his forearm. That was Owen.

"Hey, guys!" I said, holding my phone up and giving them a wave.

There was a slightly-too-long pause due to lag, but both guys lit up with smiles and greeted me in unison. I saw the tech looking at the screen from the corner of my eye. I could see the math trying to play out in their head.

"You don't mind if we record this, right?" Silas asked. They must've been watching from a tablet, because he reached his finger under the camera and swiped a few times as if he were checking a separate app. As he lifted his arm, a crescent of silvery scar tissue became visible from under his shirt.

I saw the tech look back to their computer with a subtle nod of their head. God love 'em, they must've been too nervous to ask.

"Go ahead! It's a special occasion," I said. "I'm gonna hand you over to Tess. We're about to start."

"Yay, Tess!" Owen said with a clap of excitement. He waved as I passed my phone over. "Hi, Tess! Where's Ray?"

"Hi, boys," Tess said with a soft grin. She adjusted herself to be closer to my side. "Ray's workin' from home today so he can watch our 'lil darlin'."

Of course the Tariqs had wanted to meet my new clients. They said it was because they wanted to vouch for me as a caring and capable surrogate; but I think it was mostly to judge the couple for themselves. The Gillespies had both Tess and Ray's number as my emergency contacts, which came in handy when they needed help with some legal paperwork.

Silas and Owen were my age, both of them twenty-four. They'd poured all their savings into the process of hiring a surrogate and had none left over for a lawyer. At the Tariq's behest, all three of us had stayed up late on a call to talk the Gillespies through the steps of writing a surrogacy contract. Silas and Owen seemed to hold a lot of respect for the Tariqs after that.

While Tess had the camera on her, I reclined on the table and put my feet in the stirrups. The paper blanket gave plenty of privacy -- which was good, because I didn't want my clients to see the long plastic wand the tech was prepping while it was in there doin' its thing. I'd never had a transvaginal ultrasound before, but apparently it was the only way to get a view of the Gillespies' baby so early.

I couldn't help but tense as I felt the rounded tip of the wand slip inside me like butter, aided by the warm jelly I was used to having on my belly. I could feel the blood flooding my face as the curved device slid under my public bone and pressed against a part of my anatomy that hadn't been reached in years -- though not for lack of trying, I had short fingers.

"Relax a little more, please," the tech said.

"Sorry . . . not used to this."

Don't judge me. I was living with my employers. The idea of one of them finding an adult toy in my room -- or worse, their daughter finding it -- made me shrivel.

I felt a subtle buzz inside my tissues when the device turned on. I bit the inside of my cheek.

"Okay, let's have a look at that baby," the tech said as they began angling the wand.

Tess flipped the phone around so the dads could see the action. I saw Owen grip his husband's bicep and pull him closer. The room was silent for a moment while the technician moved the wand around my pelvis.

"Can we listen to the heartbeat?" Owen asked, hugging Silas's arm.

"Not yet," the tech said, eyes glued to the screen. "Their little heart is only a few cells big right now. It's too quiet to pick up, but we'll hear it in a few weeks."

Owen and Silas shared a grin. I could see their story written on their faces and in the way they looked at each other. They'd been dating since high school, the odd-ball pairing of bookworm and athlete. After graduation, a preemptive doctor's appointment before Silas started testosterone saved his life:

Cervical cancer, stage two. The doctors had no choice but to take everything, but Silas chose to freeze a few of his eggs before the surgery. He'd gotten into non-competitive bodybuilding to deal with the effects of chemo, and it'd been his favorite hobby since. Luckily, Silas had been cancer-free for years -- Owen had gotten his first and only tattoo in celebration.

Now that they were newlyweds, the Gillespies were choosing to start their family right away -- knowing the frozen eggs wouldn't last forever. We'd lost a lot of hope when most of the eggs didn't thaw right, meaning we only had one shot at this. The Gillespies were more than open to adoption, but . . . having a baby together was something they'd hoped for since before Silas's diagnosis.

I'd known I wanted to step up to the plate as soon as I heard their story. I was proud to be helping such a sweet pair of guys have their much-wanted family. When I saw the way they looked at each other in that moment -- the excitement and love of a dream finally coming true -- I secretly hoped doing this for them would grant me some sort of karmatic favor.

I hoped one day I'd share that same ecstatic smile with someone, for the same happy reason.

The tech hadn't said anything for a while. They kept moving the wand from side-to-side between my hips and squinting at the screen. They took several images, judging by how often they hit the same loud button on their keyboard. They hadn't even turned the screen around, yet. I couldn't wrap my head around the baby being so hard to find -- not with the ultrasound wand jammed so far up.

"Are they hiding from 'ya?" I asked with a joking lilt. Something was starting to sink inside my chest.

"No, I see them," the tech said. They squinted harder at the screen. "Just taking their picture for the doctor."

"That's a lot of pictures," Silas commented from my phone speaker.

"Well, I . . . just want to make sure," the tech said. Their keyboard clacked as they took another image.

It felt like I'd swallowed lead. "Sure of what?"

The tech finally tilted the screen so the rest of the room could see it. In the grey-and-white fuzz on the monitor, a round dark void was highlighted in a bright yellow square. Resting in the void was a blurry white bean with a small flutter in the curve of its shape.

"So, here's the gestational sac," the tech said, outlining the yellow square with their cursor. They circled the cursor over the fluttering movement. "That's baby's nice strong heartbeat right there." 

"Silas, oh my god!" I heard Owen cry. "Look! We made that!"

The tech turned the wand slightly and the image on the screen rolled to the left. The same black void and white bean slid into view, except now it was upside-down. The tech once again circled their cursor around the flutter. "And this is another nice strong heartbeat."

 "They have two hearts?!" I gasped in panic. I realized how stupid I sounded after it was too late. "Or is it . . . ?"

The tech flicked the wand from side-to-side, and each time they did a little black void with a bean remained on the screen. It took a few back-and-forths for me to realize those weren't two different angles of the same image.

"Holy shit . . ." I wheezed. My hand covered my throat, as if that would loosen the strangling tightness that was setting in. "Holy shit . . ."

“What? What’s wrong?” I heard Silas ask, his voice glitched and laggy.

“Boys, can ‘ya see?” Tess asked, holding my phone closer to the screen. “Can ‘ya see that?”

I wanted to turn my head and see the parents’ reaction, but I could not move my eyes from the ultrasound. The Gillespies were quiet for a minute as the tech continued to swivel the image from side-to-side.

“How many embryos did you transfer?” the tech asked.

“There were only two that made it,” Silas answered. I could sense the moment reality washed over him. “Wait . . . wait, are they both there?!”

“Yep,” Tess said. I have no idea what emotion was in her tone, but it had a glaze of forced excitement. “They both took root.”

“I can’t quite get an image of both of them,” the tech said. “I’m trying, but it looks like they’re on opposite walls of the uterus. That flipped one is way up there, too. They’re hanging onto the roof like a bat.”

“A bat bean,” Owen said. His voice was flat, like the quip was a reflex.

“So . . . twins, right?” Silas asked. “We’re having twins?”

“Congratulations!” the tech chirped.

My pulse was pounding under my hand. That lump of lead was sitting hard in my guts, right alongside those two tiny beans. Two. Two beans. Holy shit. Two.

Tess turned the phone towards me and I saw the moon-eyed shock on the Gillespies’ faces. “Fawn, honey?” Tess prodded. “Wanna say something? What’dya think?”

“I . . .” My saliva felt thick and hot in my mouth. My tongue fell numb and it nearly flopped down my throat as I shot up on the table, my legs still up in the stirrups. “I think I’m gonna be sick!”

Tess jumped for a trash can. She aimed the camera at her face while I loudly wretched in the background of my clients’ first family video.

“This explains a lot,” Tess told the fathers with a sheepish grin. “Two times the baby, two times the morning sickness.”

The Gillespeies were quiet for a while, an awkward pause with only the sounds of my suffering to fill the void.

“We’re having twins, Owen,” Silas finally said, just as I was pulling my face from the trash.

“Yeah . . . wow,” Owen’s voice answered.

I heard a subtle thumping from their end, like one of them was bouncing their leg. The tempo was frantic.

“What’s wrong, Owen?” Tess asked. She held the phone to be more level with her face. 

All I heard was a harsh sniffle.

“C’mere, you big softie,” I heard Silas say.

“Don’t cry, honeybun,” Tess said. “It's a blessing!"

“I’m happy!” Owen insisted over the phone. “I’m so happy!” His voice was muffled, like he was hiding his face in his husband’s shoulder. “This is . . . whew! This is overwhelming!”

“No kidding,” Silas said with a laugh.

“No fucking kidding,” I said with my head in the trash.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took a few days for the shock to wear off. The anti-nausea pills cleared my head so I felt less like I was walking in a fever dream. Once that edge was taken off, it made reality slip in a little smoother. I was pregnant with twins. There were two little jellybeans inside me that would be two full-sized babies in eight months. That was fine. Yeah, that was fine. That had to be fine. If it wasn’t fine, I was going to start losing my mind! So, it was fine.

I mailed the printouts of the ultrasounds to the parents. They had the digital pictures I took, but those physical copies were what really mattered to them. The three of us had never met in person. They lived hundreds of miles away, in Michigan. They wouldn’t be flying down to Tennessee until it was nearing my due date, so any physical memento of their babies I could send to them was much appreciated.

I wanted the Gillespies to feel included in my pregnancy as much as possible, even if they couldn’t be with me in-person. Each week I’d take a picture of myself turned sideways in the bathroom mirror and sent it to them. I basically sent them the same picture four times in a row. There was nothing much to show except for the tummy flab I’d collected my first two times around the block. By week ten, though, I could feel that familiar little lump starting to form below my navel. I had slightly too much of a pooch for there to be any trace of a bump, though.

Almost three months in, I was surprised by how normal my pregnancy was – aside from the intense bouts of nausea I relied on my medicine for. I’d thought having twins inside me would up the difficulty level, but up to that point my life had changed very little. I still got up every day to housekeep and nanny for my allotted shift, and I did so with the same ease I did before. The only change was how much of an eye Tess kept on me. It was very annoying.

“Fawn, no!” Tess trotted up beside me and took hold of my hips. “‘Ya don’t need ‘ta be up there.”

“Stop it!” I gasped as the stack of plates in my hand jittered. “Don’t grab me like that if you don’t want me to fall!”

Tess gently pulled me down from the stepstool I’d been using to reach the cabinet. “I can take care of those,” she said, taking the stack of dishes.

“Jesus, you’d think these were your babies,” I muttered.

“It’s easy now, doll, but you’re not far off from those little ‘uns hittin’ a growth spurt.” Tess climbed the stepstool and I rolled my eyes behind her back at the oh-so-dangerous foot and a half of height she stood above. “I can go ahead and take over the chores ‘ya need help with.”

I shrugged, lifting my hands and then letting them slap down onto my thighs. “Alright. Want me to take over Suri while you handle the dishes?”

“Yes, and I’ll be wiping down the countertops and stove with bleach. So, I don’t want either of ‘ya in here until I say so.”

“Right. Grabbing snacks.”

Arms full of Cheerios, applesauce pouches and beef jerky, I joined Surinder in the living room. She was watching one of her preschooler shows on TV from inside her pop-up play tent. Her toys were strewn all over the floor – the living room had become her territory and she marked it with Duplo blocks and miniature plastic food. 

I bent over to start picking up and I grunted when the ligaments around my waist pulled tight. Tess was right about the babies, I hadn’t gotten round ligament pain so early before.

It wasn’t long before Suri crawled out of her tent and patted my leg to get my attention. “Fa! Fa!” she called my name until I turned around and acknowledged her.

“What is it, baby girl?”

“Go! . . . Go potty!”

“You gotta go potty? Okay, let’s go-oh!” I winced as I stooped to pick her up, my hands flying to my sides. There was that ligament pain again. I rubbed my hands into my lower belly, trying to work out the tension in my stretching muscles. “Let’s walk to the potty.”

I kept feeling that growing pain. I got a charlie horse in my back as I was helping Suri in the bathroom. That nerve-deep pain flared up in a ring around my hips as I sat down for dinner, but a slight adjustment in my posture made it nothing more than an annoyance. I went to bed that night safe in the knowledge I would wake up to another day of normalcy.

I woke up to my alarm, bright and early as always. I woke up to that ring of pain around my hips as I stretched out under the covers. I woke up to the sensation of wet fabric, something sticky plastered against the curve of my rear and up my lower back. I woke up to blood, both crusty brown and damp red, on my pajamas and sheets.

I woke up wanting to scream. Instead, I tip-toed past Suri’s nursery and padded down the hall to her parents’ room. I knocked once before opening the door. I was like a child needing to be comforted from a nightmare, appearing in the Tariq’s doorway and softly whispering their names until they stirred.

“Ray? Tess?” I leaned a little harder against the doorframe as I watched their silhouettes sit up in bed. “Can one of you drive me?”

Tess yawned. “Where, doll?”

“The ER.”

With the yank of a chain, Ray’s bedside lamp clicked to life. I didn’t need to scream. Tess did it for me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ray held my hand while we waited in the emergency room. I’d cleaned up and changed clothes – Ray had lent me a pair of his sweatpants, just in case I bled through my pad. All that remained of my pregnancy was sealed in a sandwich box on my lap. Tess suggested I take the large clump of blood and tissue I’d found in my underwear with me for the doctor to look at, but I hated holding that box knowing someone’s lost dream was inside.

Tess hadn’t come to the hospital with us. She stayed at the house until her parents arrived to take Suri for the day and then met us in the waiting room. I sat between them, resting my head on Tess’s shoulder while both of them wrapped an arm around me. We waited like that for over an hour.

Most of that day is a scrambled signal in my memory. There was a lot of waiting. A lot of fluorescent lights and white-beige walls. We watched TV together in the room they put me in, but I don’t remember what we watched. Only one memory of that ER visit is clear:

A nurse came in and confirmed what we already knew. They’d found the stringy prototype of a placenta in the tissue I’d passed, along with one of the gestational sacs. That was concerning, though. One. They’d only found one of the twins. There was a possibility I needed surgery, so they had to go in and see what was left. The Tariqs weren’t allowed to follow me as I was wheeled down to radiology.

The ultrasound room was dark and warm, the only light coming from the idle monitor of the computer. It was easy to close my eyes and drift into a trance as the tech smeared gel over my lower belly. I’d been scheduled for my next ultrasound in two weeks. I didn’t think I could handle seeing how empty I was.

“Did everything clear?” I asked, resting my hands over my sternum. Even if I didn’t want to see it, I still wanted to know if they were gonna have to scrape me out.

“I can’t say for certain until the doctor has a chance to look at these,” the tech said. “I’m just here to take pictures.”

I wished this was the same tech from my first ultrasound. I could’ve used their friendliness.

“I stopped cramping a while ago,” I said, “so hopefully it’s over.”

The tech rolled the wand up from my groin and I felt it press on the solid lump in the front of my hips. They were pressing hard – trying to get a good image, I assume – but eased off as they moved the wand just below my navel.

“Ope, no. Wait,” the tech said, “there’s the other one. Gosh, that one is way up there.”

Bat Bean. That’s what the Gillespies and I had been calling Baby B. We’d been calling Baby A “Jellybean”. I wondered what their real names would’ve been. My throat closed up and I had to stop wondering.

“Oh . . . my . . .” the tech said, nearly in a whisper. Then, much louder: “Well, hello there, little guy!”

“What?” I asked, opening one eye in hesitation.

I saw their face in the light of the monitor, saw the crescent moon of a smile below their reflective glasses. “It’s kicking!”

“What?!” 

My neck arched and suddenly I was staring at the high-def image of a grey gummy bear on the screen. Nubby limbs twitched as the oval-shaped body curled and uncurled, swimming around its bubble of fluid like a tiny fish. The bulbous head turned and I watched in utter amazement as Baby B’s whole body flipped over in a summersault.

The tech hit a key and a steady whop-whopa-whop-whopa played as a line of white peaks and valleys appeared below the image. “And we have a heartbeat!” they announced, all monotone gone from their demeanor.

I must’ve been in a state of shock, because my memory after that moment is almost entirely blank. I have a vague recollection of signing some paperwork and a surgeon standing over my bed, listing off possible side effects. I remember a needle going into my arm, and then my memory is a void.

My memory restarts at the point I woke up in the recovery ward. Please understand that before this point, I had never had any kind of knock-out juice. I’d never had surgery before. So, please don’t make fun of me when I admit that I woke up crying. My vision was blurry, my head was in a vice, my anti-nausea medication had worn off, and it felt like I had a cactus in my vagina. 

I saw a silhouette at my bedside, a woman’s silhouette with a ponytail of dirty-blonde hair. For a second, I thought my mom had forgiven me – I thought that someone, somehow, had reached her. I thought she cared enough to be worried about me. I reached out to her, craving to feel her hold me again. I felt horrible. I wanted my Mama to make it all better.

“M-om?” I mewled, my mouth slow and dry. 

I touched the woman’s arm, causing her to turn towards me. She wasn’t my mom – just a nurse who styled her hair the same way. “No, sorry. I’m not Mom,” she said softly. “She’s probably waiting for you outside.”

I knew she wasn’t. I felt more tears trail down my neck.

“Just lay back and try to wake up a little more,” the nurse told me, “then we’ll let your family come back and see you.”

I dipped in and out of a fugue state, gradually returning to reality as the drugs wore off. Although I couldn’t remember much before surgery, I was inately aware that my cervix had been sewn shut. There was no telling what had caused me to lose Baby A, but Baby B was still considered at-risk. Sealing the exit shut was the best bet to keep ‘em in there. The fact I was still pregnant at all after so much blood loss and cramping was miraculous. Just to be safe, they hooked my IV up to something that would stop my uterus from contracting. 

When I was awake enough to feel hungry and ask for food, the Tariqs were allowed to come sit with me in my cubicle of curtains. Tess sat on the side of my bed while Ray tried to nap in his chair. It’d been nearly twelve hours since we arrived at the hospital and we were all exhausted. I barely had the energy to lift spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup to my mouth. After I’d gotten some broth and crackers down my throat, and Tess and I had run out of small talk, Tess leaned in and wrapped her arms around me.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she whispered into my ear. “I know what you’re feelin’, and it’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

They weren’t empty words – far from it. Tess had been where I was time, after time, after time. Only, for her, it was worse – those lost children were her own. Then . . . there had been Ravi. I didn’t want to imagine how his loss had felt. Well . . . perhaps I could make a light comparison, but I at least knew my son was alive and well somewhere. I wrapped my arms around Tess in return, blinking back tears.

“No, Tess,” I said, my face covered by her long flaxen hair. It smelled like her mint shampoo. “I’m sorry you went through this so many times.”

Tess held me tighter.

“Have you told them?” I asked.

“No. We wanted ‘ta hear what the doctor said first,” Tess said. “Everything’s lookin’ okay with the baby right now, but he wants ‘ya on bedrest.”

“Can you . . . please call them for me? I don’t want to hear them . . .”

“I will,” Tess said, patting my back. “I’ll go outside and let them know.”

“If they ask which one it was . . .” I sniffled and choked back a small sob. “. . . tell them we lost Jellybean.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I continued to send the Gillespies bumpdates every week. I never missed a single one. I continued mailing them printouts of their baby’s ultrasounds. We never talked or chatted about what happened, nor did we discuss medical updates about Bat Bean. For those, the Gillespies waited for either Ray or Tess to contact them. I didn’t want them to associate me – the woman carrying their one and only child – with talk of heartbreak and loss. I wanted Silas and Owen to be excited when they saw an email from me, not dread clicking on it. Ray and Tess stepped up to be the bearers of heavy news for us. My doctor had me going in for ultrasounds every two weeks, which meant a lot of baby pictures from me and a lot of medical updates from the Tariqs.

My stomach remained flat for quite a while, with just the slightest bump in my lower belly for weeks. But one morning, around fifteen weeks in, I swear I woke up looking like I’d swallowed a cantaloupe. I guess the baby had finally hit that growth spurt Tess had predicted.

His name was Milo Bennet Gillespie. Silas and Owen named him shortly after we discovered he was going to be a boy. Owen was a fan of classic books who worked at Barnes & Noble, so I had no doubt he was the one to choose the middle name. Sometimes we playfully referred to Milo as “Bat Bean”, but that nickname faded out in favor of his real name. I worried over him – a lot. I bought a home doppler online so I could check if his heart was beating. Whenever I noticed he hadn’t moved for a while, I would pull up my shirt and rub the doppler on my bump until I heard the whoosh of his pulse. The doctors kept saying everything was looking good with him, but I worried.

I was essentially given leave of my housekeeper duties until Milo was done cooking. The doctor wanted me off my feet, so I spent most of my days on the couch watching cartoons with Suri. She was observant enough to ask about my big belly in her two-word-sentence manner. Unsure how to explain the situation, I told her there was a small person living in my stomach and that his name was Milo. I even took her tiny hand and let her feel where Milo was wiggling around. She didn’t like that very much, it freaked her out and she ran to her mother. I didn’t want her to get excited for a baby that wouldn’t be coming home with me. That wouldn’t be fair to her . . . or to me. 

It wasn’t the best experience, being pregnant without the baby’s parents there. When I was growing Suri, her parents were there with me at every doctor’s visit. They took me on day trips just for fun and to make sure I had enough to eat. They were able to put their hands on my belly to feel their daughter kick, and put their lips close to my skin so she could hear their voices. Milo didn’t have that. His daddies were hundreds of miles away. They’d never felt him squirm around, only I had. He’d never heard their voices close-up, just over the phone . . . maybe. The clearest voice he’d ever heard was mine . . . and my voice wasn’t going to follow him home.

Although I had the Tariqs there to support me and love me, I felt alone in my pregnancy. Milo was just a little visitor in the household – we had no toys or bedding or bottles for him, all of that was with his fathers. After he was born, no one would mention him – his future didn’t involve us at all. I was the closest thing to a mother Milo would ever have . . . and I wasn’t going to be a part of his life. 

It was an experience I’d had before, with the last baby boy I’d held under my heart.

It took a toll. It really took a toll.

Before I knew it, I’d blown up big as a barn. I no longer had a lap when I sat down, my belly nearly reaching my knees. Milo was a big boy – the doctor estimated he was around nine pounds – and he was squishing all the fluid in my body into my lower half. My legs were hot and heavy and my feet were too swollen for my shoes, so I shuffled between the bathroom, kitchen and couch in flip-flops. God, I hated being on my feet. I spent my days either dicking around on my laptop – using my belly as a desk – or watching TV while sprawled out on the couch. 

Surinder got really upset with me one day, when I refused to play tag with her. Ray and Tess were very mindful of how much Suri “bothered” me, but I never considered it bothersome. I loved Suri, she was practically my niece. I was sure to let her know that I wanted to play with her, but my “belly buddy” was making me too tired. I made up for it with lots of hugs and kisses, and I promised that once I was feeling better we’d play tag as much as she wanted.

As soon as I hit thirty-seven weeks, I was on high alert. I’d warned my doctor that I delivered before my due date at least once before, but he wanted to keep Milo in there until he was full-term. So, he refused to remove my stitches. As miserable as I was, I agreed. I wanted Milo to bulk up as much as he could, even if it added to my discomfort. If I could give Silas and Owen a perfect, healthy baby . . . maybe it would make up for what happened. 

My body had failed one of their babies – and so help me God I was gonna force it to nurture the other! I was determined! I would make it to forty weeks!

Yet, I would not.

I pulled myself off the couch one afternoon to grab a snack and my knees almost folded. I leaned against the arm of the couch as a deep downward motion slid over my organs. My lungs were slowly relieved of their crushing burden and they eagerly filled to their maximum. I lifted the weight of my belly with one desperate hand because I had a blaring instinct about what was happening.

“Milo, don’t you dare!” I muttered under my breath.

Like a Duplo block clicking into place, Milo’s head slipped into my hips. My belly visibly dropped, I felt it shift to hit heavier in my hand. Almost immediately, I felt the baby’s heft sitting directly on my sutured cervix. I groaned and pressed my thighs together. The pain throbbed between my legs, sharper than I’d ever felt.

“Hey, Ray?” I called, knowing he was upstairs in his office.

“Yeah?” his distant voice rumbled through the ceiling.

“Can you bring me my phone?” I called. “I need to call the doctor.”

A few minutes later, Ray thumped down the creaky stairs with my cellphone. He paused when he saw me leaning over the back of the sofa, kneeling with my thighs apart. “You okay?” he asked, handing me my phone.

“I need to call the doctor and tell him I need my stitches out, like . . . tomorrow,” I said, unlocking the screen. “Milo’s in my hips, he’s not gonna wait another two weeks.”

Ray rubbed my lower back, scratching his goatee in thought. “Is he going to wait until tomorrow? You’ve been having cramps, right?”

“Yeah, but they’re irregular as hell,” I said, putting the phone up to my ear. “I’ll be in labor soon, but not that soon.”

I was wrong. I was so wrong. I was so horribly wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Silas? Hi. Yeah, it’s Ray.”

“Fuck! Oh, fuck!”

“We have a situation. Fawn’s having contractions and you boys need to get on a plane right now.” Ray ground his knuckles into my back while I wailed face-down on my bed.

I gripped a bag of frozen peach slices in a towel between my thighs. My arms hugged all my pillows to my chest beneath me, and I buried my head between them to yell my way through this latest contraction. My belly was squeezed into a perfect sphere, peeking out from under my shirt as it hung down to my mattress. The contractions were actually pretty mild, all things considered. They didn’t hurt that bad at all. 

However! My body was forcing Milo down hard against my cervix. That pain was far, far worse than the contractions. His head was grinding against a closed exit, but the sheer force was spreading that exit open anyway. The baby was a battering ram and my cervix was a fortress door, splitting apart around its locks and bars with every slam. 

“Fuck, I want these stitches out!” I cried into my pillows. “I want them out!”

“Yeah . . . yeah, you can get a refund on the tickets you already bought,” Ray continued on the phone, and on my back. “I’ll book a room for you, don’t worry about that. Just focus on getting here. Bring an overnight bag for each of you and some basics for the baby. I’ll pick you up from the airport, don’t bother with an Uber.”

Tess walked into the room, a large duffel bag slung over her shoulder and her hair thrown into a messy bun. “Everything’s in the car,” she said. Her hand squeezed my shoulder until my posture relaxed and I lifted my head from the pillows. “You ready to go have a baby, ‘shug?”

I nodded. Tess helped me to my feet and I waddled down to the car doubled over and holding my belly up. Even without a contraction, the pry and pull on the strings holding my cervix closed was constant. My seam was literally about to pop. I had to recline the passenger seat as far as it could go so I could somewhat lie on my side. My contractions were regular, but very far apart; so, thank god, I didn’t have to deal with any while cramped in the car.

My chest tightened when we pulled into the hospital parking lot. I knew I’d be having the baby here. I’d prepared for it, but thinking about it was so different from doing it. Because of the complications with this pregnancy, I had no choice but to deliver in the same maternity ward I’d walked into years ago. I . . . didn’t like thinking about what I went through in that ward. 

Tess came around to my door to help haul me out, but I didn’t move. I stayed on my side, staring at the clouds hovering above the cars – they were painted with the summer sunset. 

“‘Ya want me ‘ta get a wheelchair?” Tess asked, leaning on the open car door.

“Yeah,” I sighed, resting my cheek on my hand. “Tess, I don’t wanna go in there. I wanna do this at home.”

Tess looked over her shoulder, scanning the hundreds of windows looming ten stories over us. “Me neither,” she said, then turned and hustled toward the hospital entrance.

At eleven-thirty that night, I found myself sitting on a birthing ball in a stagnant delivery room. The only light was the yellow wall lamp mounted over my bed – anything brighter and my head would pound. A monitor belt was pulled snug around my belly, leashing me to a gaggle of machines beside the bed. An IV bag of pitocin hung from a hooked pole beside me, the tubes trailing down to a needle taped in place on the back of my hand. 

I bounced on the ball, my hands braced on Tess’s knees while she sat on the side of the bed in front of me. I felt my torso squeeze and held my breath. The monitor beeped, registering a contraction.

“Blow the pain out,” Tess crooned, ghosting her fingertips up and down my arms.

I grabbed her knees and rotated my hips on the ball. A small “Ack!” bubbled up from my throat before I sucked air in through my nose and forced it out through pursed lips. I blew hard until my lungs went flat, then filled them again and continued the process. Salty water leaked from my shut eyelids and slid in thick droplets down my neck and back. I blew so I wouldn’t scream. I knew I could scream, but I didn’t want to come unglued only a few hours into active labor. Hell, my water hadn’t even broken yet. 

I could still be in control of myself, even if this birth was not going according to plan.

I was hoping labor would be smoother after the stitches were out, but they’d only caused more complications. I’d dilated quickly regardless of the sutures, already three centimeters open when the doctor snipped the strings. He’d gotten to me too late, though. The stitches had ripped small tears in my cervix as Milo’s head pulled them apart. The swelling was immense – within minutes I was sealed shut again and my labor stalled. Hence, the pitocin.

The pitocin hijacked my body, forcing it to crush inward on itself like a soda can in a hydraulic press – at a strength and speed beyond what felt natural. I had never felt labor this intensely! I would desperately cling to any self-control I had in that beige nightmare of a room.

“Mmmmh,” I hummed through my nose, my hip swivel morphing back into a bounce as the contraction eased.

“Good job,” Tess grinned at me. “You’re doin’ so good, Fawn.”

I moaned and leaned back, bracing my hands on my hips as I rode that birthing ball like a rodeo star. “Have they landed yet?”

“Doll, they ain’t on the plane yet,” Tess said. “The only direct flight they could book on such short notice leaves at one-fifteen. Ray’ll call us when they take off and when they land.”

“God,” I huffed, my chin falling onto my chest. “They gotta be here. They can’t miss this!”

“Everyone’s doin’ their best and that’s the only thing they can,” Tess said. “It’s only an hour flight. They’ll be here in time, don’tcha worry.”

My hair had grown past my shoulders during my pregnancy, and it was suffocating me. I lifted my auburn curls off my flushed neck to cool down. Tess watched me for a moment before pulling the elastic band from her hair. A cascade of blonde fell down her back, sun-bleached highlights vibrant even in the low light. Without a word she came ‘round and gathered my frizz into her hands. A few flicks of the wrist and she had my hair up in a damp, poofy bun.

Tess kneaded the back of my neck for a while. I rested against her, letting her work my muscles like dough. Milo kicked, causing a dull ‘thump’ on the doppler.

“Fawn,” Tess broke the silence, “there’s nothin’ wrong with askin’ for pain relief.”

“Don’t want it.”

“Doll, I can tell it’s hurtin’ like hell. You’re hooked up ‘ta stuff that could rocket a foal out’a ‘ya.”

“I’m. Fine.”

“Just ‘cause ‘ya managed before doesn’t mean-.”

“I don’t wanna be stuck in that bed!” I cried. “I don’t wanna lay there like a lame horse ‘til they strap me up in stirrups! I’m NOT doing that again!” 

I pulled away, using the bed’s railing to lift myself to my feet. My hand wrapped around to support my lower spine, exposed by the untied loops of my hospital gown. Tess picked up the absorbent pad on the birthing ball, folding it over to hide the bright spot of blood where I’d been sitting. I saw it, but it didn’t scare me – I knew it was from all the swelling. She retrieved the pink water cup from the table and let me drink from its straw.

“I had my baby here, too,” she finally spoke. She sat back down on the bed and smoothed her hand over the starchy sheets. “The beds feel the same.”

“Ravi was born here?” I rocked myself from foot-to-foot, holding onto the railing to keep steady. “I didn’t know that.”

“Four years ago as of January,” Tess said with a nod. “I was in here a few months before ‘ya, ‘shug. Who knows? Maybe they had us in the same room.”

God. Had it been four years already? I had a four-year-old somewhere out there and he had never seen my face. What toys did he like to play with? Did he watch the same preschooler shows that Suri and I watched together? What were his favorite foods? I wanted to know all of that. I wanted to know him! I wanted to know the sound of his voice, the color of his eyes, the texture of his hair . . . or his name.

A scar somewhere in my chest ripped open and I swear I could feel a black void pouring over my ribs like paint. I held my breath. Tears dripped from the tip of my nose and onto my belly. I was in so much pain, but not from labor. My soul was bleeding – the wound as raw as the day it was carved.

In my mind's eye, I saw myself reaching for my son as the doctor held him up. I saw my arms cradling his little naked body against my chest while he took his first breaths. I saw my lips pressing kisses into his bald, wrinkly scalp while my eyes cried phantom tears onto his skin.

None of that had happened at all – but it should have! I should have been given the chance to say goodbye – to look into his eyes and tell him how much I would always love him, even if he couldn’t see me. No, not even that. He should have stayed my baby! I should have gotten pregnant by a different man – a good man. I should have been on the pill instead of relying on his father’s cheap, oversized condoms that were probably expired. I should have fucked up my life less. I should have made a thousand better choices, so he could have stayed my baby!

I screamed along with the frantic beeping of the monitor, but all physical pain paled in comparison to the emotional. I’d cried through my heartbreak once before, but being back in that damn ward, in an identical room, brought all my grief pouring back out. Tears and liquid snot flowed down my face as I white-knuckled the bed’s railing to keep me upright. I gulped full lungs of air, only to wail and scream and sob until they were empty.

I think Tess knew my tears were from deeper down than they seemed. She leaned close and gently took hold of my contracting sides. Her palms rubbed large, soothing circles into my hardened womb. Her sympathetic eyes never left my face.

“Good girl,” she crooned. My eyes were blurry with salt water, but I thought the skin around her eyes looked red. “Scream it all out.”

“I want my baby, Tess!” I cried. “I . . .” my shoulders jerked with a sob, my diaphragm spasming from lack of air. “I n-never got to ho-hold him!” Another hiccup. “H-He’s going to think I . . . think I didn’t w-want him! But I . . . I wanted h-him so much!”

“Hushhh,” Tess shushed me. She wiped my face with the scratchy hospital blanket. “Hush now, doll. Calm ‘yaself down and get some air in.”

“Okay,” I nodded, still choking on sobs and panting for breath. “Okay . . . okay . . .” The awareness of the contraction began creeping into my brain. “Ohh . . . ohh . . . oh, shit!”

Blinded with tears, I threw my arm out to grab onto Tess. I balled her shirt collar in my hand and restarted my “blow the pain out” technique.

Tess continued massaging the sides of my belly, waiting to speak until she felt my muscles start to uncoil. “Are ‘ya sure you don’t want somethin’? I can call the nurse.”

I sniffled and wiped my eyes on my sleeve. Able to see again, I realized I hadn’t been wrong. Tess had been crying. My hand released her shirt, and my arm snaked around her shoulders to pull her into a hug.

“Tess . . . I just want you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Three-thirty in the morning. We hadn’t heard anything from Ray, and even less from the Gillespies.

A nurse had been in to check me twice in the last hour. Milo was still in his comfy water balloon and that seemed to be cushioning him from the extra-strength contractions. I nearly started crying again when they told me his heart rate was fine and I could continue to labor on my own. With how damaged my cervix was – and how many liters of pitocin they’d given me – I’d been terrified of an emergency C-section.

By then I’d lost the use of my legs, but I refused to stay on the bed for more than a few minutes – usually just long enough to pull my knees back and let a nurse stick her fingers inside me. With the help of an orderly who’d come to swap out my IV bag, Tess had taken the mattress off the bed so I could have something soft to lie down on without feeling trapped.

I’d taken to half-lying on the floor with my arms and upper body resting on the birth ball. I couldn’t keep myself quiet during contractions any longer. Making low, rumbling noises like a cow in a ball gag was a must. It was how I was surviving. Between those moments, I was just tired. It was a relief that I couldn’t feel my cervix anymore, but that was likely because it had effaced. My eyes were heavy and full of grit, but the sixty-something seconds I had between contractions didn’t allow me to sleep.

At that point, I was beyond the mental capacity to worry about Silas and Owen. Milo and Tess were the only other people who existed in the world as transition’s brutal hand crushed me in its fist.

In hindsight, I think that’s why I didn’t panic when the pressure set in.

Tess was kneeling on pillows on the other side of the birthing ball, humming a lullaby to relax me between contractions. Her tune tapered to a halt when I shifted my hips, one leg pulling up to my side. “What’cha need, ‘shug?”

“I feel him.” I stated it like a bland fact.

My eyes were closed, but I felt Tess’s hand touch my shoulder. We’d already decided what we’d do if this happened before the Gillespies arrived.

“Alright, doll. It’s alright,” she crooned. “Lemmie come around.”

I heard the soft ‘pap pap pap’ of Tess’s socks traveling in an arch around me on the faux wood floor. Her weight settled on the mattress by my feet.

“Promise I won’t touch,” she said. “I’m just eyes.”

I grunted and rolled my leg outward to open my hips. Oh, I knew that pressure so well by that point. I knew better than to doubt my body. More pitocin mixed with my blood, drip-by-drip, through the needle in my hand. I wasn’t sure if someone should’ve removed it by then, but whatever. I was gonna use it to my advantage.

The monitor around my belly beeped. I pressed my toes down and pushed before I truly felt the pain. Milo kicked the doppler again, like he realized he was finally being evicted. After a solid ten seconds, I relaxed with a nasally whine.

“He’s coming, Tess.”

“I know, doll.” Tess gently nudged my foot to a more grounded position. “Soon as I see ‘im, I’ll call a nurse. Ain’t no one gonna put ‘ya in that bed, I’ll make sure’a that.”

I scooted up more into a half-squat, one arm draped over the ball and the other wrapping around my knee. Chin-to-chest, I used the rest of the contraction to bear down against the familiar sensation of a baby sliding down my passage. I took frequent breaths between my efforts so I wouldn’t get dizzy, panting a small “Uh . . . Uh . . . Uh” with each exhale.

I didn’t need to throw my all into pushing, the contractions were doing most of the work. Maybe that pitocin was a blessing in disguise – I don’t know if I had the energy to make progress without it. Five pushes in, and I felt my inner walls stretch around the baby. My quiet whines and grunts escalated into growls as the pain grew sharper, and I flowered open wider.

“Damn, he’s huge!” I moaned as I eased off my most recent push. Forget “Bat Bean”, the fucking Chicago Bean was coming out of me!

“Remember, you’re pushin’ out the sac, too,” Tess said.

I hugged my hiked-up leg closer to my side, teeth gnashing in my skull as my face turned purple with effort. “Ugh!” I released a small bark of pain during a brief pause, then spent the rest of the push with a low growl in my chest. 

My labia brushed the crease of my thigh, the skin bowing out and preparing to stretch. I felt the inner structure of my clit get crushed as the mass of the baby pressed its way down. It was something I’d felt before in the past during childbirth – but never to the extent that it fired electric shocks of nerve pain down both legs. My toes curled as a ghostly, stabbing pain assaulted the arches of my feet.

I relaxed against the ball with a loud huff of air. “Tess, rub the bottoms of my feet,” I begged, my head falling back against inflated rubber. Thank god she did it without question, I was too embarrassed to explain.

Two contractions later, I was mid-push when a gout of hot water splashed onto the mattress. My focus was broken by the release of pressure, and I leaned forward to peer over my belly. A saw an expanding area of wet sheets between my thighs, darkening the color of the mattress as more amniotic fluid drained from me.

“He’s makin’ his way out, doll!” Tess grabbed the blanket and bunched it up around my rear to soak up some of the mess. “You’re openin’ up!”

“Ahh!” The arm holding my knee in place flew down to pry open my leg, fingers pulling at the skin where my thigh met my groin. My body pushed for me and my perineum thinned out and spread over the head as it dropped past my tailbone. 

“Fuck, Tess!” I whined, vocal chords straining. “Fuck, he’s hurting me!”

“Take it slow,” Tess said, patting my thigh. “Let it stretch.”

I arched back against the ball as my lips bulged outward with the size of Milo’s head. The arm draped over the ball was numb, but it was the only thing keeping me upright. The room reverberated with a roar I didn’t realize was mine as I felt that all-too-familiar fire blaze to life. My entire world shrank down to that inferno between my legs. The only thought in my head was to push down into it. My fingertips migrated beneath me, pressing against the hellfire in my perineum as the flesh pulled dangerously tight. I was aware Tess got up from the floor, but I was blind and deaf to the world.

The ringing in my ears muffled the sound of the door bursting open. My eyes flew open in surprise as a gloved hand gently nudged my fingers aside and cupped my perineum. A scrubbed nurse knelt in front of me, a mask covering her face from the nose-down – but even then, her eyes smiled at me.

“Good job, Fawn!” the nurse praised me. “Baby’s crowning. You’re nearly done!”

I flinched when someone else took my leg and hiked it up to my side. It was Tess. I finally understood she must’ve run and got help. I thought I heard a cell phone ringing, but no one else reacted to it. I accepted the fact I was hallucinating.

I threw my arm around Tess’s waist, unaware my fingers were coated in blood, and held tight as I pushed again. I gasped deep and screamed as I felt myself make quick progress once the top of his head breached the air.

“Don’t stop, doll. He’s comin’,” Tess said, her lips brushing my scalp.

Sweat stung my eyes, so I kept them squeezed shut. My whole body trembled, my nerves going haywire as Milo surged forward with a massive, unstoppable push. I felt the little bump of his nose traveling through the pouch of my perineum.  The nurse palmed the crown of his head, trying to let me stretch easily over his brow.

A loud slam caused everyone to jump, and the bright light of the hallway sent a migraine through my skull. The nurse turned to scold the two men scrambling into the room, but Tess saved the day:

“They’re the parents!” she cried. “They’re stayin’!”

I couldn’t pay attention to anything going on around me. With a roar of effort, I bore down until I heard the wet little ‘shlip’ of Milo’s head pushing free into the nurse’s hand.

“Owen! Silas! Here, now!” Tess ordered.

I heard two more bodies thump to the ground beside the floor bed.

“We’re so sorry, Fawn!” I heard a familiar voice yell – a voice that belonged to a man I’d only ever heard through the static of a screen.

“Later, Owen!” Tess snapped. “Focus on your baby right now! Do not miss this!”

I didn’t care about anything – I knew this baby was on his way out right then and there! Nothing else in my mind or body would function until he’d made his journey earth-side! I clung to Tess, who pressed my leg back wider as Milo’s thick shoulders started to press out of me.

“Push, doll. Push on ‘im hard,” she encouraged me softly, her voice like warm honey.

The nurse began pulling down on the baby, forcing his shoulder to pry my public bone out of place to come through. I don’t quite know what the sound I made was, but it didn’t sound human. The nurse pulled upward, and . . . 

“And we have a baby!” the nurse cheered as Milo’s body gushed out onto the mattress. A small trickle of leftover fluid followed his feet.

“Holy shit.“ My whole body relaxed as soon as that relief came.

My eyelids slid open when I heard that little guy make the sweetest newborn cries I’d ever heard. For a big baby, he had a small voice. Thin, blonde baby down was plastered to his scalp, and even while he was all squished and blotchy I could tell he looked like Owen.

“Oh, look how sweet!” the nurse sing-songed while she toweled Milo dry. “Isn’t he a perfect little man?”

A second nurse mysteriously appeared in the background. I peeked around Tess and saw the extra nurse fanning Silas with a laminated paper while he sat slumped against the wall, looking dazed. Owen kept looking at his husband over his shoulder, but his attention was constantly pulled back to his son.

“Oh . . . hey, guys.” I sleepily waved to the fathers. “When did you get here?”

Owen glanced back at Silas, who was rubbing his forehead and seemed to be coming around. “Just in time.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I flipped through the pictures in my phone while I rode home with Tess. Milo and I had stayed in the hospital for a few days for observation. I’d needed a few internal stitches (wow, real shocker there) and they just wanted to keep an eye on Milo because of his troublesome gestation. At first, there was a little bit of concern because of how lethargic he was – but his bloodwork was fine, so I guess he was just a sleepy lad. He wasn’t awake in any of the pictures the Gillespies and I had taken.

There were countless photos of Milo being snuggled by all of us. Ray and Suri had popped in to see me the morning after I gave birth – mostly for Suri’s sake, she’d woken up crying over not being able to find me at home. I had a picture from that morning of Tess holding Milo in the room’s armchair while Ray held Suri up so she could see what my “belly buddy” looked like. Suri somehow looked confused, disgusted and amazed all at once. My favorite picture was the one Tess had taken of me and the family together. I was sitting up in bed and holding Milo while Silas and Owen sat on either side of me. All of us – except Milo, who was asleep with a binky in his mouth – were smiling wide at the camera.

One of the first pictures in my album was of Milo swaddled like a burrito a few hours after he was born, fast asleep in the baby cot beside my bed. His name, weight and time of birth were written on a card taped above his head. Beside that card was the paper cutout of a purple butterfly. 

In Silas’s first picture with his miracle baby, he was pale as death but still smiling. He’d needed to sit down for a while after passing out, but he’d held his little boy nearly every minute in that chair. He’d held Milo while they performed his medical tests, only allowing the nurses to take him away for his first bath. In the picture I’d taken after that, Silas was gazing at Milo with all the love in his eyes that a father could give – and Milo was wrapped in a fresh blanket with an embroidered purple butterfly on the corner. The Gillespies had brought that blanket with them.

At first I’d thought the purple butterfly cutout was just a decoration choice the hospital had made; but when Milo’s first gift from his parents had the same image, I’d asked why it was showing up so often. Turns out, that hospital had adopted The Purple Butterfly Project – an initiative that offered support for patients who had lost a child in a set of multiples. The cutout on Milo’s cot was meant to celebrate the life of his “flown-away” twin, as well as make staff members and visitors aware that he was the wingless half of a pair. It took on the burden of explanation, so Silas and Owen could bond with their son without worry.

My phone buzzed with a new message from my clients. It was a selfie Owen had taken of himself and Silas at the airport, with Milo snug in a sling around Silas’s chest. The picture came with the message: “Thank you for blessing us so deeply! We hope the joy you’ve given us will be repaid – with interest! Milo is going to be showered with love every day of his life. You’re more than welcome to keep in touch with our family, Fawn. We’re happy to let you watch Milo grow up with us. Love, Owen and Silas.”

I locked my phone and sat it face-down in my lap. “Hey, Tess?” I asked, watching the road unfurl beyond the windshield as we traveled the rural roads. “When will it be my turn?”

Tess glanced at me. “For what?”

“Being happy,” I deadpanned. “I’ve made three different families happy. You and Ray, the Gillespies . . . and my son’s parents. I just wanna know when my turn is.”

The rest of the car ride passed in total silence. When we parked in front of the farmhouse, Tess turned to look at me while she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Doll, there’s somethin’ I want ‘ya ‘ta see.”

Going upstairs was a herculean task with how stiff and full-body sore I was, but Tess held my hand and walked with me step-by-step. She brought me into the master bedroom and sat me down on her side of the bed. Tess opened her bedside drawer and pulled out a wooden box that was roughly the size of a checkerboard. She plopped down beside me and stared at the box in her lap for a moment before saying:

“I haven’t opened this since we brought it home. I couldn’t. But . . . I think now’s the time.”

I watched as Tess lifted the lid of the box, revealing a carefully folded fleece blanket with pastel stars printed on it.

“What is it?” I asked.

Tess lovingly took the small blanket in her hands and began unfolding it. Beneath the layers of fabric was a blue crystalline teddy bear sculpture holding a silver heart between its paws. Tess picked up the bear and held it in her palm – that’s how small it was.

“This is Ravi,” she said.

Once light hit the silver heart at a different angle, I saw the engraving on it: “Ravi Idris Tariq”, with a single date underneath. Tess turned the bear over in her hands so I could see the second engraving on its back: “I carried you every second of your life.”

“I wrapped ‘im in his blanket,” Tess said, her thumb stroking the bear urn’s head. “It made it feel more like I was puttin’ him down ‘ta sleep instead’a . . . y’know.”

I was too stunned to speak.

Tess set the baby blanket in the box and – tiny urn still in-hand – got up and walked to her closet. A quick rummage, and she returned with a different fleece blanket. This one was pastel rainbow colored and was covered in white stars, an inverse of the other.

“These came as a set,” Tess said. “We donated everythin’ he never got to use, except for this. This one’s special.” She rubbed the blanket on her cheek. “I prayed over this one. I asked Mother Gaia ‘ta allow my baby’s spirit ‘ta be linked to this earthly object, so that I could hold it and it would be the same as holdin’ him.”

Tess re-joined me on the side of the bed, clutching Ravi’s urn to her heart while she cuddled and kissed the rainbow blanket. “I still miss ‘im. I miss ‘im a lot,” she said. “Having this connection to him helps.”

After a minute, Tess set both blankets and the urn inside the wooden box. Then, she took my hands into her own. 

“Neither of us got ‘ta hold our little boys,” she said. “Mine was already in the arms of Mother Gaia, and yours was in the arms of his mama before you had the chance. That’s what’cha told us, right?”

I nodded, silent and enraptured. Tess smiled at me.

“Well, when you’re feelin’ more ‘yaself, I’ll teach ‘ya how to use my sewin’ machine,” she said, giving my hands a gentle squeeze. “You’ll pick out the fabric and you’ll make a baby blanket. That’ll be his baby blanket, ain’t no one else’s. I’ll ask Mother Gaia ‘ta bless it for ‘ya. When you feel all that love buildin’ up with nowhere to go, hold it. Hold your baby. He’ll be able to feel it, no matter where he is.”

I returned her smile, but my throat was almost too tight for me to speak. “I’d like that.”

We made a small shrine for Ravi’s urn on the mantle that night. Ray and Tess had Suri help set it up, explaining the existence of her elder brother to her in a way she would understand:

“Mama had a baby in her belly just like Fawn did,” Ray said, lifting Suri up so she could drop a few cut flowers from the garden beside the tiny blue bear. “That was before you were born. You were just a twinkle in Mama’s eye back then.”

“Where the baby?” Suri asked as her father plopped her back down.

“This is the baby,” Tess said, tapping on the silver heart between the bear’s paws. “He had ‘ta go back ‘ta Mother Gaia while he was still in my belly. This is where his body sleeps.”

I lit a few jarred candles and placed them on the mantle. From my back pocket, I pulled out the laminated purple butterfly cutout that had been taped to Milo’ cot at the hospital. I placed it upright against the mantle wall, so that two purple wings appeared to be sprouting from Ravi’s bear.

It wasn’t my turn to be happy, yet. I had a long way to go before I could start making my own dreams come true. Maybe school could wait a while. Maybe the money I’d earned throughout my surrogacy could be put to better use.

Maybe I was sick of staying on the path my own stupid choices had led me down. Maybe it was time I started making the choices I’d wished I’d made earlier.

I was tired of living in the shadow of grief Alexander had cast over my life. I’d lost everything because of him . . .

. . . but I was ready to start taking it back.

As the train came to another screaming halt, I was twisting myself into a pretzel. My stomach was cramping again, straining hard to move along the mountain of food I'd eaten twelve hours earlier. The doors slid open, and several passengers I recognized as fellow students stood up. Newt joined them, slinging his bookbag over his shoulder and plucking the air pods out of his ears. I knew I needed to get up, but my legs needed a few extra seconds of convincing.

"You good?" Newt asked as he watched me lift myself off the seat in segments.

"I'm fine," I said, walking with him onto the platform. "I just hope that Pepto kicks in soon."

"How many exams you got today?"

"Three," I groaned, my head falling back on my shoulders. "Chemistry, biology, and that stupid-ass remedial algebra class."

"Ha! I've only got two," Newt gloated, pausing to zip up his oversized red jacket.

"Uh-huh, but don't you have to wait eight hours between them?"

"Gives me plenty of time to study," he said as we continued up the station stairs. The sonofabitch was talking like he hadn't been complaining all week about his morning class and evening class having the same exam day.

"Please," I smirked, rolling my eyes, "I know you're just gonna play The Sims 4 on your laptop."

We both shivered as we walked out of the muggy underground and into the biting cold winds coming off the harbor. I pulled my hood over my head and pulled the drawstrings tighter around my neck.

"You can't prove anything," Newt grinned, his breath coming out as a soft cloud.

I gave him a comedically unamused look. "You're pregnant, so I'm not gonna hit you."

Newt chuckled and placed his hand over the small, four-month bump that was hiding under his jacket. "Thanks for the save, kiddo."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The walk to campus was only two blocks, but it felt like I was forcing myself to trudge through mud. I regretted ordering so much food. Clearly, I hadn't learned my lesson, yet.

My overeating the last few months had me in a constant state of bloat. It always felt like a giant water balloon was sitting right on my guts. I was peeing every few minutes, my kidneys working overtime to get rid of the extra fluid I was holding. Gas bubbles were always rolling through me, too. They were mostly just annoying blips of movement but recently they'd gotten painful.

The worst were the large pockets of air that got trapped under my ribs. They would stay there for hours sometimes, making it excruciating to breathe. Nothing in the world could help me when I got like that; I just had to go about my day in agony and wait until the pressure spreading my ribs apart decided to move along.

By now, I was kinda used to functioning while my intestines were trying to kill me; but, God, they were trying extra hard that day.

My stomachache flared up right outside the library, the shortcut I took to get to chemistry class. I sat down on a bench, gripping the edge of the seat and trying not to double over. My sides ached, and a deep stabbing pain plunged deep inside my abdomen. The invisible knife twisted, and I realized I was holding my breath.

"Fawn?"

I looked up at Newt, who had doubled back to check on me. His first class was on the other side of campus, and the library was where our daily routes split for most of the day.

"I'll be fine," I said, waving him away. "I'll buy a soda at lunch. That usually helps."

Newt glanced over his shoulder, down the path he was supposed to take, and then stepped a little closer. "I won't be out of here until five. Don't wait up for me, okay? When you're done with exams, just go home."

"Yeah, I will," I nodded. "That sounds good."

Newt nodded back, looking a lot more at ease. "Is it okay if I come over with some soup later? I found a new recipe online and it looks really good!"

"That's fine," I said, stretching my arms over my head to loosen up my torso. "Just use your key. I'll see 'ya then, bud."

"See you then." He gave me a two-fingered salute and continued on his way.

I checked the time on my phone and sighed. I had to get moving again, or else I'd have half my final exam score deducted for being late. My chemistry professor was a real stickler for being on-time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'd moved to New York City to finally get my degree in Botany & Plant Science. It'd been my dream for a while to become a researcher and study the pharmaceutical use of plants. Having a pair of old hippies as parents will inspire that interest in 'ya. Queens College was the best scholarship I could get out-of-state, and I had to be out-of-state. I just had to be.

I already had trouble fitting in with my classmates as a "mature" undergrad student. Since when was twenty-nine considered too "mature" for college?! All of my subjects were basic introductory courses, and that meant I was surrounded by fresh-faced teenagers less than a year out of high school. Even Newt wasn't that young. He'd taken a few years off before college, but apparently twenty-four was still young enough to fit in with the crowd.

At least not having any classroom friends meant I was left alone that morning. I sat in my assigned seat and watched the rest of the students file in from the hallway. The desk allowed me to hunch down when my stomach clenched again, the muscles in my abs pinching hard. I crossed my legs and bounced my foot, trying to distract myself from the storm brewing inside me as the professor laid out the rules of the exam period.

I was in pain for that entire hour. It was hard to keep up with the time limit. I had to pause on several multiple-choice questions -- sometimes because they were challenging, other times because the stabbing, twisting pain was flaring up. I began fantasizing about how good I'd feel after I was able to get my hands on a soda, and that daydream carried me through.

Shockingly, I was one of the first students to stand up -- and I'd finished with barely eleven minutes to spare. My professor nodded at me as I placed my exam packet on his desk, and he quietly wished me a good winter break as I shuffled out the door.

Freedom at last! There were about two hours to kill before my biology exam, so I was sure with a light snack and some rest I'd be feeling better by then.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'd worked hard to build up enough of a nest egg to live off in New York. I'd squirreled money away for three years in a secret bank account, and lied to Alexander about how much my hourly pay was. My scholarship covered only part of my housing costs, and I knew living off savings couldn't last all four years of school. However, I was not going to stress over buying a three-dollar root beer when it felt like I was being wrung like a washcloth.

The dining hall at Queens was a glorified cafeteria: fold-out tables, plastic chairs, too much noise and not enough space. I really wasn't hungry, but I knew if I skipped out on lunch I would regret it later. So, I stopped by the Nathan's stand to grab a hotdog and bag of plain potato chips to go with my large cup of carbonated medicine.

I made do with sitting at the empty end of a crowded table, where the huddle of dudes at the other end were playing Magic: the Gathering. That stuff was more Newt's scene than mine, so I put my earbuds in and pulled up the YouTube app on my phone.

The Peanuts Christmas special played on my screen as I nibbled on chips and washed the salt away with long swigs of root beer. I was hoping to summon a little Christmas spirit to help me not feel so dead inside. It was two weeks away, and it was the little candy-red cherry atop my mountain of things to worry about. Between hesitant bites of hotdog, I wondered how I could pry some gift ideas out of Newt last-minute. I'd already gotten him an Amazon gift card, but I wanted to get him something a little more per-.

I sucked a sharp breath through my nostrils, choking on half-chewed bread as my stomach cramped again. It didn't feel the same as the hundreds of other cramps I'd been having. This one was bad. It was really. Fucking. Bad! I curled up in the seat, my hands dipping inside my hoodie pocket to press against my stomach. Even through three layers of clothing, I could feel my muscles clenching.

And it just wouldn't stop. Most of them would fade after a few seconds, but this one just kept going. I doubled over, pressing on my belly and praying the pain would stop.

And then it stopped.

I sat up straight and looked around. No one nearby was paying any attention, but my freckles turned pink anyway as I quickly rose and tossed what was left of my food in the trash. I chugged the rest of the soda.

There were still two exams to go, but I was already checked out for the day. I knew there was a bottle of cupcake vodka leftover from Makayla's birthday party last month. Mixed in a milkshake, that stuff had been sweet enough to give me both a sugar high and a buzz. Maybe if the soda didn't do the trick I'd go home and try soothing my stomach with one of those. I deserved one already, and it wasn't even noon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It hurt to be upright.

My biology exam was half lab work and half a written test. The class was split into two groups: one to do the lab first, and one to do the written exam first. Guess which one I was in.

I was white-knuckling that clipboard as I quietly shuffled from one specimen sample to the next. Identify this bone. Identify that leaf. Is this a rock or a fossil? I was rocking my weight from side-to-side as subtly as I could. The cramping hadn't eased up since lunch. I was feeling this one down to the soles of my feet and keeping 'em moving was the only way I could stay standing.

At the apex of the cramp, I grit my teeth as a new pain bloomed deep inside my hips. I leaned my weight over the table, disguising the motion as trying to get a better look at a specimen. A knife-like stab hit my cervix and the ache radiated between my legs.

Ah, okay. I knew that kind of pain, even if it'd been a while.

No wonder the indigestion was so bad. I always got an upset stomach the day my period was due to start. 'Course, I could never tell when I was due. I tried tracking them, but ever since puberty they'd been on a schedule of their own. My cycles had been mild spotting for most of that year, so I figured there was a mighty buildup of Mother Nature in there that was trying to come out. No wonder I was already cramping so hard.

Oh, boy . . . and from my experience, I could tell I was in for a world of hurt once I actually started bleedin'.

I made it through the written half of the exam free of carnage. The pain was somehow easier to deal with when I knew it was all just hormones. At the water fountain down the hall, I popped a few ibuprofen out of my purse and downed them. There, now I knew I'd be feeling better once those puppies kicked in.

Another two hours, and I'd be free to go home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was relaxing on a sofa in the library when I suddenly felt a pouring wetness in the crotch of my pants. Ah, fuck. Fuck!

I left my backpack behind in a panic and speed-walked to the nearest restroom. I subtly pulled my hoodie as far over my hips as possible, hoping to hide anything that leaked through my sweatpants as I shuffled past other quietly studying students. I cussed myself out in my head for not thinking to put on a pad as soon as I started cramping.

Once I was hidden away in a stall, I inspected the damage. My underwear was damp with a watery pink discharge as well as several dark red clots. Yes, some of it had seeped through my pants, but not enough to be noticeable. I could still feel it dripping down into the toilet as I tried to clean everything up.

All it took was that first drop of blood for the cramps to reach their full strength. That was always the case when I missed a few periods. I pressed my lips together to stop a groan from escaping as I doubled over and hugged my midsection. My entire torso throbbed and clenched inward. My toes curled inside my sneakers as the pain once again trickled down to the soles of my feet. My jaw locked up as I grit my teeth against the pain, and I felt a charlie horse starting in the back of my neck.

Everything. Fucking. HURT.

The cramp left me feeling slightly weak. It didn't just disappear, it just . . . settled back into my muscles as a soft, constant ache. I held a wad of toilet paper between my legs for a few seconds, and in that short amount of time it was soaked in pastel pink. The floodgates had opened, and it wasn't going to stop. This pink discharge was no doubt going to become a full red tide by the time I got home.

I returned to the couch wearing a cheap cotton pad from the restroom vending machine. Although it wasn't smart, I swallowed two more ibuprofen dry. I sat curled up in the corner of the sofa, killing the last forty minutes before my exam watching videos on my phone.

The cramps just kept coming. I kept feeling blood gushing out of me and into the pad. My labia were constantly throbbing, and not in the good way. Every time I cramped, it felt like I was being turned inside out.

I seriously considered blowing off my algebra exam. I would fail the class, but I could just re-take it next semester, right? Maybe I could re-schedule the final if I brought in a doctor's note? Well, fuck . . . no, I couldn't do that. My health insurance wouldn't fully cover an emergency room visit and I doubted a doctor's note from three days after the final would be able to save my sorry ass.

Besides, I hated remedial algebra so much I felt nauseous at the thought of doing it again. I was just gonna have to suck it up and get through it like everyone else. Then, I wouldn't have to think about anything else until tomorrow.

God, why me?! Why today of all days to start the worst period in the history of mankind?!

I wondered if there was some cosmic deity out there who was taking joy in my suffering. If so, at least this pain was good for something in the grand scheme of things.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Despite the biting December air, I felt sweat dripping down my back as I trudged across campus to attend my last exam. It hurt to walk. It hurt to stand. Hell, it just hurt to exist. I made myself keep a steady pace, although my body was demanding I stop with every cramp. When that telltale stabbing would start in my lower back, all I wanted to do was lay on the floor and cry; but I was a grown-up, and I had grown -up stuff to do.

When I sat at my desk, my hips jolted up as if the hard plastic seat had burned me. I let out an involuntary gasp of pain, and my face burned in embarrassment as everyone turned to look at me. I started a chesty cough to disguise the sound.

I hadn't noticed it when sitting on the plush couch, but my labia were ungodly swollen and sore. This was not something that usually happened during my period. I knew my hormones were way out of whack this time around, so . . . maybe it was some weird hormonal reaction?

Whatever it was, it wasn't making the exam any easier.

My whole weight was sitting square on my pelvis in that uncomfortable classroom desk, and it was torture. I tried sitting as far back as I could to take the pressure off, but that just made my tailbone hurt, too.

My pencil slipped in my wet palm as I desperately tried to fill the bubbles in on my scantron sheet. I wriggled my hips, trying in vain to find a way to sit that didn't hurt like hell. Sweat began to drip from under my sports bra beneath my layers of clothing. It was taking everything in my power not to beg my professor to let me take the exam while lying on the floor. Fuck, I'd even do it standing on my head -- anything to get the pressure off my poor vagina.

Ten minutes in I decided to leave my final grade up to fate. I was in so much pain, I no longer cared if I failed the class. I chose my answers based on educated guesses, skipping the solving process entirely.

I was staggering to my feet within twenty minutes, and my professor gave me a scowl when he saw my worksheet hardly had any equations written on it. He leaned in as I placed my scantron on his desk.

"I hope you know you've wasted your time," he whispered, glowering at me from under his bi-focals. "You may as well have not showed up."

The only answer I could offer was a nod. I hurried into the hallway, tears blurring my vision.

I knew I'd wasted my time. I knew I'd fucked myself over. The further I walked down the hall, the more I regretted not trying harder.

I threw the test after ten fuckin' minutes, just so I could go home and be lazy. I wasn't sick, I was just on my period! What sorry excuse was that for wasting tuition money? There were probably dozens of other students in the same amount of pain I was in, but they weren't throwing away their grades over it. God, I was pathetic. I was so determined to pass this stupid remedial class at the start of the semester, even if it was with a 'C', but in ten minutes I'd given up.

Maybe Alex was right. Maybe I was just too damn stupid to be here.

By the time I stepped outside, I was crying. I pulled up my hood to hide the tears and kept my head down as I began the long walk off campus.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The noon train wasn't as packed as the seven o'clock train, but it was still too full for my liking. That was what I hated about the city; you couldn't go anywhere without brushing shoulders with a stranger.

There were available seats, but I couldn't sit down. My lower lips were throbbing with my heartbeat. I had my arm wrapped around a standing bar, clinging for dear life against the g-forces of the train. My stance had to be wider than natural, or else my thighs would pinch and cause a hot, pulsating pain through my stomach. I knew I probably looked like a drunk trying to hold themselves up against gravity, but I reminded myself that New Yorkers see things like that on the trains all the time. No one would say anything as long as I kept to myself. My hood was still up to hide the leaks in my eyes, the flow of tears I couldn't fully control.

I clung tighter to the bar as I cramped again, and a warm gush soaked into the pad between my legs. My eyes dripped as they stared off into nothing, my mind going blank from the pain. A sudden "buzz-buzz" from the phone in my pocket brought me back from the void. I blinked my vision clear and checked the text message. It was from Newt, replying to a text I'd sent earlier:

"Sorry ur feeling so shit :( You going home?"

I rested my temple against the smudged chrome pole and typed my reply:

"On the train now."

Three grey dots appeared below my message.

Buzz-buzz.

"Still want me to come over??"

I replied: "Yeah. Makayla's with her boyfriend for the week and I need distraction."

Grey dots. Buzz-buzz.

"Awww poor bb. A whole apartment all to yourself. Glad I'm not THAT unlucky. /s "

I grinned and dried half my face on my shoulder. Newt had never fit in with his roommate's group of frat boy sports fans. Just like I had never gelled with Makayla's crowd of hardcore party girls. They weren't "bad" people, they were just . . . not "our" people.

"We need new roommates," I typed.

Dots. Buzz-buzz.

"Ye."

I felt another huge gush, and my thighs pressed together in response. My inner cheek bled as my teeth chopped through it. Fuck. Forgot to not do that.

That cheap pad didn't feel like it was gonna hold up much longer. The last thing I needed was to reenact the elevator scene from The Shining in front of two dozen strangers on the subway. I pulled my hoodie further over my hips, just in case.

"Fair warning," I typed, "my apartment might be a bloodbath by the time you get there."

Dots. Buzz-buzz.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!"

"Omfg."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Ohhh my fucking god."

I angled my lower back into the stream of hot water, pressing my hands into the glass wall of the shower. I hung my head as my body gradually clamped down on itself like a vice, tighter . . . tighter . . . tighter. Now that I was safely inside the privacy of my apartment, I could finally deal with the pain how I wanted: whining like a 'lil bitch.

"Ohhh my fucking god," I repeated, the sentence crawling out of my mouth as a slurred moan.

The water splashed pink at my feet. A few dime-sized globs of red fell onto the shower mat and were washed away. My pad had been soaked through with that thin pink discharge, but hardly any real blood. My body must've been trying to break my uterus open like a piggy bank to get out what it needed, because I felt like I was dying.

"God," I dragged the word out for a solid minute in a deep, angry groan as I sank to my knees. I ran out of breath, but the pain kept going. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and pitched forward, eyelids pinched shut and teeth open in a gaping snarl. The muscles in my torso vibrated with tension. It was hard to breathe, my ribs too tight to get a full breath. The air I managed to suck in came back out as another drawn-out groan: "Fuck."

I'd been trying for hours to ease the cramping and indigestion that were teaming up to kill me. I'd taken enough ibuprofen to drop a horse. I'd taken Pepto-Bismol like shots of tequila. Heating pads had helped, but not for long. I'd put an ice pack between my legs to bring down the swelling, but the ice stung. I'd turned the temperature as high as I could tolerate and was now face-down on the shower floor, letting the water hit anywhere it could reach. My skin was scalded red, but the iota of relief I got was worth it.

Knock, knock, knock. Three solid knocks on the bathroom door.

I knelt there with my cheek in a puddle of water, too engulfed in pain to react.

"Soup delivery!" A cheery tenor voice on the other side, somewhat drowned by the water rolling over my ears.

Newt? What was he doing here? He didn't leave school until five. Shit, what time was it? How long had I been home?

I lifted myself onto my elbows, blowing out a long breath as I waited for the pain to fade. As soon as it did, I called loud enough for Newt to hear me over the roar of the shower:

"I'll be out in a sec. Just put everything in the kitchen."

"M'kay."

I didn't hear Newt walk away, but I heard his heavy crockpot being set on the counter -- the kitchen shared a wall with the bathroom. God, that apartment was tiny.

Ugh. I had to get up. I'd been in there too long. The water was turning cold. My hands and feet were pruney. I had to get up. I had to get up.

I climbed up the slick glass wall, leaving smeared handprints in the condensation. The higher I stood on my feet, the worse I felt; but if you'd asked me to describe how, I wouldn't have known what to say. I steadied myself, turned the water off, and opened the shower door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a fresh bowl waiting for me on the counter as I stepped into the kitchen, but I didn't have an appetite.

"Don't like it?" Newt asked, serving himself a helping of soup from the crockpot.

My hair was hanging limp around my face and shoulders, dripping water like the branches of a weeping willow; but the droplets rolling down my neck weren't water. A sticky layer of sweat was coating my back and my legs beneath my plush winter pajamas. The bowl of homemade French onion soup sat untouched and steaming in front of me.

"No, it looks good," I said. "I just don't really feel like eat--ugh!" Another cramp started and this time I didn't hold back a moan of pain. "Augh!"

Newt set his bowl on the stove and took a few soft-footed steps towards me. "Does your period usually hurt like this?" he asked, rubbing his hand over my back.

I shook my head and braced my hands against the counter, unable to answer him with words. I tried to speak, but my mouth would only allow a series of small moans and gasps as the pain went on and on and on and -- fuck, this wasn't right! It had been almost a year since my last full bleed, but there was no way in hell this level of pain was normal!

I leaned over the counter, rocking my hips in a fruitless bid to shake away the twisting, stabbing, squeezing pain. As I struggled to fill my lungs with air, my mind scrambled for answers. Was this what endometriosis felt like? A cyst rupturing? A fibroid? Oh my god, what if it was a tumor?!

I felt more fluid dripping in globs onto my pad, and I let out a sob. "It feels so bad!" I whimpered to my friend, tears coming to my eyes. "I just . . . just want it to stop!" My lower back suddenly felt like it was going to break, and I let out another sob as my knees began to give out under me.

Newt saw me falling and he acted quick. His arms hooked under my shoulders, and he arched his back to try and keep me standing.

"Woah, hey!" he cried as he caught me in a low crouch, just before I'd hit the ground. "What's wrong?!"

My first thought was to tell him to put me down. He shouldn't be straining himself like that, and I worried about him even through the blinding pain. I opened my mouth to scold him, but that's when it happened. I will never forget the moment it happened.

A huge weight began to sit on my lower bowels, and I swear to god I thought my guts were going to fall out. A tsunami wave of nausea rolled up from that horrible sinking pressure and hit my stomach like a geyser. I dry heaved and sank lower to the floor as my mind was overtaken by one silent demand:

Push!

"Newt-!" was all I managed to gasp.

And then I was bearing down with all my strength.

I'd never felt anything more intense in my life. It was an unholy demon pressing down on me, and I had no choice but to submit.

A scream -- a full, honest-to-god scream -- ripped itself free of my throat. I rested just long enough to inhale, and then I was pushing again, my chin pressed to my chest. I felt a shift deep inside, pressing against my lower spine. Something was prying me open. Something was slipping its way down.

I screamed again as the realization finally dawned on me: Something was coming out!

"Fawn?!" I heard his frantic voice, but my vision was haloed in black. "Fawn, talk to me!"

I held onto Newt as my lifeline, until I ran out of the strength to push anymore. "Help me!" I panted, hugging him closer. "God, please help me!"

"What is it?!"

"I'm fucking turning inside out!" I cried, growling as I pushed the object lower into my pelvis.

At first, I was convinced my colon or something was about to pop out like a fucked up horror movie; but I felt the object heading to a different area of my body. I could feel my swollen labia pushing out into my pad.

"Augh, I think it's my uterus!" I sobbed as I strained -- unable to stop myself in both regards. "That's what's falling out!"

"What the fuck?!" Newt cried. "That can happen?!"

"Yes!"

"Oh, shit!" Newt jumped up and began circling the kitchen. "Where the hell is my phone?! I'm calling 9-1-1!"

"Please fucking do!" I yelled, dropping to all fours as Newt hurried to look for his phone in the living room.

Forbidding myself to push was like forbidding myself to breathe. It simply had to happen. Tears flowed from my eyes as I was forced to push out one of my own internal organs. Not just any organ, the one that would end my dream of having a family once it was gone.

This was hell. I was in hell.

My hips tried to jerk away from the pain as the object began to force itself though my vagina. I felt the object pressing against my pad as I pushed, and I wondered if it would be enough to hold it in. Maybe if I could somehow keep it inside me, the doctors would be able to pull it back in.

The next push told me I had no other choice but it let it out. What was happening was happening fast. Too fast. Too fast! Oh, fuck! I felt my skin yawn open and pull tight, creating a hellish burn that made me scream myself hoarse.

I hiked my pants down and craned my neck to see between my legs. The first thing I saw was a long strand of pink-red mucous clinging to my bulging lips for a few seconds, before dripping down onto the pad at my knees.

I saw a hint of something beginning to breech out of me. It was fleshy and covered in blood. It was somewhat blue colored and wrinkled, and I was terrified. My inside-out uterus was coming out of me, and I couldn't bear the sight.

I shut my eyes tight and screamed through another huge push. I had a flash of the thought: "Since when was my uterus this big? Isn't it supposed to be small?" But it was gone before I could dwell on it.

Newt's footsteps ran back into the kitchen.

"Okay, I found-."

Both his voice and his footsteps came to a screeching halt as they entered the room. I heard something drop to the ground, and it sounded like the heavy-duty casing Newt kept on his cellphone.

"Holy fucking shit . . . !" Newt's voice was muffled, as if he was pressing his hand to his mouth.

"If it's really bad, don't tell me," I begged through gritted teeth, a small sob jolting my shoulders.

Newt didn't say anything, but I heard him drop to his knees in front of me. I opened my eyes and saw him spreading a hand towel from the sink over his lap.

"It's not that bad," he said, taking my arms and adjusting them so I was holding onto his shoulders. His voice was uncanny -- it was obvious he was pretending to be calm.

Newt draped the towel over his hands and my heart dropped.

"W-what are you doing?" I asked.

"Don't worry. I've got you covered," he said. "Just push."

"Newt?" I asked, turning my face towards his. My heart was starting to pound behind my eyes. "What's happening to me?"

I didn't see him smile, but his tone remained steady. "It'll be okay, Fawn. I promise."

I gripped his arms tighter as another pain started. "Oh god, I'm dying, aren't I?" I groaned. I wasn't even scared at the thought -- at this point, death felt like the only end to this pain. I'd all but accepted it.

"You're not dying, Fawn," Newt said, brushing his cheek against mine. His fledging facial hair tickled. "You're fine, you just need to push."

Sighing, I lowered my forehead to his shoulder and followed my body's demands. The stretch continued, grew worse by the second, until something round and squishy slipped out and dangled between my thighs.

God, it was finally over.

All we had to do was call an ambulance and they could take me to surgery. However this happened, there was still a chance my uterus could be saved. My dream didn't have to be - !

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck, I was still pushing!

I screamed into Newt's body as my burning lips spread further over something wide for a few white-hot seconds. There was a disgusting splash that gushed over my inner thighs, followed by the softest little 'plop'.

I was empty. I felt hollow and numb. My body buzzed, but it felt dead. I was left gasping in deep breaths to steady my racing heart, staring off into nothing over Newt's shoulder. My eyes burned from sweat pouring down my brow.

"Fawn," Newt said -- his voice sounded miles away, "look."

"I don't wanna look at it," I sighed, wiping my face on my sleeve.

That's when she cried for the first time.

A warbled little mewl flew up to meet my ears.

I looked down, in the space between Newt and I . . . and I screamed.

A blue cord of flesh was hanging between my legs, coated in blood. It trailed down in a soft arch to the towel sitting on Newt's lap, where I saw the answer to every question I'd had that day.

Laying there between Newt's hands, squirming and screaming and blue, was a wrinkly newborn baby.

She was a girl.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

End of Part 1 of 2