Anything But Pink
a Percy Jackson and the Olympians story
by EmilyHelene
Him
The fog crowded and distorted his already slightly blurry view of the road in front of him. He silently cursed himself for leaving his glasses around. Despite what Katie told him, he was not becoming a blind-as-a-bat old man at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. The glasses were for reading only. Well, reading and driving. And sometimes he had to use them at work during board meetings. However, he swore up and down that his vision was fine, a woman's intuition be damned.
Frantic, his hand struggled to grasp the gearshift to his right and he momentarily fumbled, making the transition between second gear and first gear less leaving something to be desired. As the little light that hung above him, Travis put his foot on the gas pedal and tapped it impatiently. The stop light was taunting him with every second it refused to turn to green. He didn't know how much time he had until he missed it. This was the one time in his life where he refused to be late. A few second later, the light changed and he sped off into the night. For those few seconds, relief flooded through him like a fresh transfusion renewing his hope and to an extent, his vitality.
As everyone else's world lay still and fairly quiet aside from the raging lunatic in the red Camaro getting pissy over a stoplight, his world spun at a breakneck speed.
Her
Flowers. There were so many flowers around the room where she lay, clutching her abdomen and grimacing as the numb pain coursed through her entire body. She wasn't sure how much more of this she would be able to take before her body completely shut down. Instead of dying, she focused on the flowers. They were quite beautiful, various shapes dyed in all sorts of beautiful shades. She reached for a rose with a faintly yellow hew and examined it, hand shaking through the pain. They were so pointless. Why would you kill something only to give it to someone else? Maybe it worked the same way for cats when they bring back a half-masticated field mouse they found lurking unassumingly in the garden after nightfall. Like the flowers, the mouse had probably never seen it coming.
"You're seven cm, Katie," he told her, peering up and over her round belly and sweat-soaked face. As another contraction coursed through her, she screamed. The pain was becoming unbearable and even worse than that Travis was late. Again. Therefore, she was doing it alone.
Him
After what seemed like years but had probably only been about ten minutes, the piercingly white light of the hospital appeared. The contrast between it and the dark country highways that he had been driving on earlier was incredibly stark. The sky seemed to have been lit up, though the stars had become harder to see which was admittedly kind of awful. Katie loved seeing the stars and she absolutely hated that she had to deliver this baby in the so-called "most industrial hospital ever to be build in rural New York."
He temporarily lost sight of daily processes as he nearly flew from his vehicle. Only the lights and the obnoxious chime of the seatbelt warning light on the dashboard stopped him. Once parked, he threw himself into a run, nearly crashing through the door of the lobby in his haste. The nurse on-duty didn't bat an eye. It was like she saw this kind of heart wrenching desperation all the time at this ungodly hour. Truthfully, she probably did working the graveyard shift. Somehow, he was able to sputter out the words Katie Stoll and maternity and when she pointed him in the direction of the nearest elevator, he broke into a run. The instructions from there were scrawled in neat printing on a yellow sticky note crumpled in his fist.
Her
Frustrated. That's what she was. Well, that and in pain. She was also very much in pain, but mostly she was frustrated that he wasn't there yet. How foolish had she been, thinking that he would finally reach maturity and think that he would be on time to the birth of their first child. How completely ridiculous of her to assume that she might need him as she fit a basketball-sized object through the very place she was trying her hardest not to focus on.
When he finally did show up, she was going to grab one of those medical instruments that the doctor kept asking for and throw it at him.
"Just a few more, Katie." The doctor's voice was filled with hope and, miraculously, she absorbed the feeling like a sponge. Hope, she could handle that.
Or at least she thought that she could until the pain set in again. She should have caved and gotten the stupid epidural even though she knew it was pharmaceutical poison, especially for a body that had only ever adapted to organic and homeopathic medications. Not being able to feel her lower half would be a godsend right then.
"You have to push," he said, urging her through the immense pain. She shook her head fervently.
"Not...until..." but her was scarcely above a whisper and she uttered the words through her teeth. This baby was not being patient. "He gets here," she finished, exasperated. The desperation was clearly depicted by the harshness of her expression. Her face felt hot and she was panting like crazy but she was determined; she refused to overcome this final obstacle without her husband, even if he was exhausting and incredibly moronic.
She may have refused, but her body did not. As the final contraction seared through her abdomen like a white-hot branding iron, she let out a scream not unlike the one she released a few minutes prior. She didn't even hear the doctor inform his team that she was crowning. She also didn't hear Travis finally come flying through the door like a freight train and stubbed his toe on the door jamb. If she weren't in labor, she probably would have laughed at that.
Him
Even though she was hooked up to a zillion IVs and various contraptions with a look of pure rage on her face, he had never been so happy to see her. Tears stained a face that had become rather red and blotchy since he had last seen her, but he decided not to mention it. At that moment, she probably would not have hesitated to gut him with one of the many interesting medical instruments on the table to her right. Actually, she probably would once their child had been born. He was so late.
Her head rolled to the side as she thrashed around in the narrow hospital bed. As their eyes locked, his heart swelled. She looked like she wanted to kill him but he rushed to her side anyway. Averting his eyes from the doctors behind them and brushed the hair off of her face.
"I'm so sorry I'm late. I'm pretty sure that I broke about six road rules on the way here and nearly doubled the speed limit. How are you doing?"
She screamed and he jumped.
He tried the doctors instead. He thought he would be incredibly grossed out by the whole delivery process but he was relieved just to be there. Katie, however, was not.
"One last one, Katie," the doctor said. Travis squeezed her hand and she worked up the courage for one final push and grimaced through the last contraction. With the small, squirming ball of life held safely in his latex gloves, the doctor smiled. "You'll want to paint the room pink," he laughed. "It's a girl."
Travis smiled proudly and turned to his wife who, for the first time that night (or morning, depending on how you looked at it) she didn't look like she wanted to kill him. She did, however, appear ready to murder the doctor.
Though she was tired, she had enough energy to glare at the doctor and snap, "I'll paint her bedroom whatever colour I want to. This family doesn't cater to gender stereotypes, thank you very much."
The doctor looked somewhat take aback and sincerely apologetic. He had obviously intended it to be a light-hearted joke and not for Travis' wife to take such offense to it. But that was Katie.
"I'm truly sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Stoll. I meant no harm at all, truly -" but he was cut short by Travis' own apology on behalf of his wife.
Turning to Katie, whose red face had faded back to a natural colour, he whispered, "Katie, we have a daughter."
And that was all it took.
As the doctor walked away to bring their baby over, Katie whispered, "We're going to paint it anything but pink." As the doctor placed the baby in her arms, Travis smiled and bent down to kiss the two most important women in his life. As she held their newborn daughter close, he couldn't help but think finally. They were a family now.