#survivingwidow

Things moved quickly after Natasha was prepared for recovery.  Bobbi has never been so grateful to be so attuned to her body, she had a sense of when her contractions were going to come and could stop any delicate work to ride out the fleeting, intermittent, but increasing pain.  Natasha was given a private recovery room to ride out the anaesthetic.  Bobbi wasn’t entirely sure where Logan had come from but she was glad he was willing to sit in with Natasha, since Clint was going to struggle between being there for her and for the birth of their baby. 

Bobbi had thoroughly frustrated her own staff by the time she was actually deposited in the delivery suite, not to mention past halfway dilated. “You know I wasn’t going to sit down for this part anyway, so I might as well have been useful.”  She snarked as Paul took his leave.  The nurse gave a nod to the fathers and Ellie, the nurse who had helped Bobbi deliver babies before, and would now deliver Bobbi’s own child into her arms, said, “Good luck,” and left looking like he was worried that Bobbi would throw something at him.

Instead she reached for Steve’s hand and squeezed it for the most intense contraction yet.  She was still upright but sweating heavily.  She was awash with adrenalin and oxytocin, which meant she was totally unaffected by how tired she knew she should be after Natasha’s surgery.  At some point someone had braided her hair and she had no recollection of that.  She honestly didn’t remember removing the bun her hair had been in under her surgical garb. 

She had wanted to do this at home.  They tended to do that these days, saving the hospital for when there were signs of distress, but seemed pointless to leave when they were already here.  What had seemed like a smart decision was now something that she found herself questioning every five or so minutes, when she wasn’t thinking about how terrible this whole process was.  What if this was actually a catastrophically wrong decision?  Or worse, what if she actually needed to be here because there was a complication with this unnecessarily difficult ordeal?

“I’m going to go back and time,” she panted, “and find the first human to stand up,” another pant, “and kick her in the face.”  She was a biologist.  She knew fundamentally that her pelvis was too small for this nonsense.

“Bobbi, when the next contraction comes it’s time to push,” Ellie replied, as if all her patients threatened Homo Erectus, from her position crouched on the ground.  In the throes of labour Bobbi had decided that the correct position was upright, holding onto Clint and Steve.  Gravity felt like as essential a birth partner as any of the three people in the room.