Story by:Tess2645/Kdoc27
Dylan stopped himself from biting his thumbnail...again.
They'd (physically) removed him from the delivery-room after he slammed one of the doctors against a wall.
Dylan knew that some of the doctors present were only there to observe, but at that moment, with Marco in that much pain... he just...lost it!
Actually by the time the four large orderlies(who had pry his fingers loose from the doctor's shirt) were called in, the doctor, who was only there to advise and observe, had become really alarmed.
At first Dylan had dragged the shocked man over to the bed with him(after slamming him into the wall and demanding that he 'do something!'), then flung him to the floor, almost as an after-thought; just getting something out of his hand so he could hold Marco's hand with both of his.
There'd just been so much blood...
He'd been holding Marco's hand, just as he had all the way there in the ambulance...
Once they'd gotten him into a bed, first removing the somewhat complicated brace that helped him balance and carry the awkward weight,( which his body and nervous system had never been intended to handle),Dylan thought venomously, Marco had seemed fine.
As badly as Dylan wanted this to be over, he was hopping it was just another small glitch, another false alarm.
Marco had just a little over six more weeks to go. He looked better than he had in a while, what with one thing and another.
The mood swings had become less frequent, and so had the sudden bursts of temper...or so Dylan had thought...
They'd been in their living-room, watching some footage from one of the last games that Dylan had played before he'd had to stop, to be able to spend more time at home with his expecting husband.
Marco had tried to get him to keep on playing; told him he really shouldn't worry about it, that he could handle it, and if he needed help, they could always get a nurse, or a housekeeper to be there when Dylan had to be away.
Glancing away from the screen, Dylan noticed Marco staring off into space, a gentle, somewhat speculative smile on his face.
"Hey, What?" Dylan asked, gently tugging on a long soft curl.
Groaning a little as he sat up, Marco said, "I'm thinking of a sandwich."
"Oh, let me, just tell me what you want on it."
Lifting himself carefully, and with what seemed to Dylan like a lot of work, Marco got up; rolling his eyes as he replied, "I can make my own sandwich, I'm not helpless you know."
"Marco, I didn't say you were helpless. You know I want to help, thats what taking a job that doesn't keep me traveling all the time was all about, so I could be here... to help."
"Yeah, and you recall I didn't want you to!" Marco fumed, his fingers curling into fists.
Dylan, who'd been getting up to follow, stopped as Marco turned, pointing at him, his other hand pressed against the growing bulge that was their daughter. "Just sit there, don't even think about following me!"
Raising his hands in surrender, Dylan sat back down; not wanting to do anything to set him off.
'Jesus!', he thought, 'I'll be glad when this is over.'
So he'd gone back to watching the film.
Ten minutes later, unable to even pretend to be paying attention to the film, Dylan got up from the couch.
He'd let Marco yell at him, it didn't take that long to fix a sandwich, and besides, he usually banged things around when he was angry...it was just too quiet.
The refrigerator door was open; the mayo sat unopened on the counter...
Coming around the kitchen-island, he saw...
"Marco!"
He was on the floor, curled on his side. He held his rosary in one hand, while the other moved slowly over his swollen belly.
Dylan was running, falling to the floor beside him and scooping him into his arms before thinking whether he might hurt him or not.
"Baby, what happened!" Dylan whispered, almost fearfully.
Marco's eyes opened then, the expression in them one of unease, but also...certainty.
Looking up at Dylan he said, barely above a whisper, "I think it's time."
In the emergency room, Dylan had to let go of Marco's hand while the brace was removed, and a few hurried tests were made and fluids drawn.
While they awaited the results, Marco tried to act calm, though the look in his restless eyes said he was anything but.
Dylan, holding his husbands hand again, massaging the back of it with his thumb, tried, again, to apologize for upsetting him so badly...
"Baby, I'm so sorry I..." he began, but Marco, blushing in embarrassment cut him off.
"It's not your fault...I...I felt...something but..."
"What ?" Dylan asked when the barely audible mumbling trailed into silence.
Marco pulled him down so he could lay a hand against his(Dylan's)worried face.
"I felt...I don't know an odd sort of...pressure...not...just a sort of ... I don't know, I thought it was...just maybe I needed to eat something. You've already given up so much to be able to spent time with me...us. And you do so much for me all the time...even when I fuss and worry so much...
"Marco I love you! I love it when theres something I can do to help. And...well...you always 'fuss and worry', especially if you need help with something." Dylan smiled a little as he said this.
"My lovely, brilliant, funny, wonderful, kind, considerate, terribly stubborn husband! We knew this would be...well, complicated from the word go, but after everything we've gotten through, I'm sure we can get through this. You want to know why?"
Marco, really listening to him now, felt himself grow calmer. He always did once he decided to let Dylan help him with something, no matter what it was. That had never changed...
Able to smile a little now, Marco asked, "Why?"
Dylan threaded the fingers of his left hand through Marco's, so that their wedding rings lay side by side,"My ring on your finger says I never have to let go, and I won't! 'In sickness and in health, till death do us part'" he quoted. "You're stuck with me!"
Dylan leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on Marco's smiling lips."O.k.?" he asked, drawing back briefly.
"O.k." Marco replied, blinking away unshed tears.
"It didn't say 'in morning-sickness and in health!'" Marco mumbled, glancing away for a second.
"Excuse me?" Dylan asked, grinning at him with his lips an inch above Marco's own.
"I said, 'Thank you sir, may I have another'!" Marco whispered, his still tear-bright eyes now locked on Dylan's as he drew him down to finish their kiss.
A doctor, not their regular one, entered then, and began explaining that the test results so far seemed to indicate that their child would need to be delivered in the next few hours...
The epidural they'd given Marco should have made him unable to feel anything from the waist down by now, at least that was what the anesthesiologist had said.
The lower half of Marco's body was only visible to him via a mirror that hung from the ceiling.
There were doctors and nurses on each side of the screened apart sections of his body.
Now that the pains had subsided to a dull ache, he could look as the doctors prepared to make the incision.
With Dylan beside him, that big strong, warm hand holding on to one of his own, his rosary in the other: in spite of the suddenness of it all, he felt ready.
Dylan brushed the hair out of Marco's eyes, fingers trailing down to cup the side of his face.
"I love you ." Dylan said softly, as he stared into his husbands lovely dark eyes, proud of the lack of fear, or even real nervousness there.
"Love you too." Marco whispered, gazing lovingly up at him, before returning his eyes to the mirror.
Dr Levinson, who was performing the delivery, called for stats from each station. The leader of each team answered with their various read-outs .
You could tell he was smiling behind his surgical mask, as he leaned over so Marco could see him in the mirror.
"Ready Marco?"
Marco glanced up at Dylan, took a deep breath...let it out slowly and smiled."Let's do it, I can't wait to meet her!"
The doctor called for a scalpel.
A nurse slapped one into his hand.
He began the incision...
Suddenly, Marco's body stiffened, and the hand that had only been holding Dylan's tightly, gripped so hard that his fingers went numb!
Marco's teeth clenched, and his head snapped back, the tendons standing out in his neck as sweat began to pour from him. Dylan saw the hospital gown grow a darker green before his frightened eyes!
"Marco! What...!"
Monitors all over the room began to beep and buzz.
"Marco?" Dylan cried!
Marco was breathing harshly through clenched teeth. His eyes flashed open; glared into the mirror where a thin line of blood ran down his belly from where the doctor had cut him.
Dylan was told by a nurse(she was pushing him back as she spoke) that he needed to step back for a moment.
There were shouts about 'fetal heartbeat', and other 'vitals' of both Marco and the baby's.
They got the bleeding stopped, and Dr. Levinson told Dylan they were going to try another injection.
Dylan was already stepping forward, his hand reaching for Marco's when he thought to look at the nurse for permission. She smiled, and nodded at him.
Taking Marco's hand, he bent to kiss his forehead."I knew it!" he whispered; trying to sound disgusted.
Marco, frowning, lifted an eyebrow at him. "What?" he half-growled.
"That stubbornness, it goes all the way to the bone!"
Marco rolled his eyes ...but smiled a little as he kissed the back of his hand before whispering back; "Shut up!"
In a few minuter Dr. Levinson was checking Marco again to see if the anesthetic was working properly this time.
He called for a check of vitals again, asked if Marco was ready again.
Marco and Dylan were looking into each others eyes.
When Marco's eyes widened and his hand tightened on Dylan's again, his face crumpling in pain...
Dylan whispered"F#k!", though he didn't realize it, and he looked up into the mirror.
There was blood everywhere...
Dylan turned, grabbed Dr. Lenski by his gown.
"You don't even look surprised. You expected this!"
Slamming the man against the wall when he said nothing, Dylan yelled into his face "Do something!"
Before Lenski could answer him, Marco whimpered his name...
Turning back, dragging Lenski with him, he picked up Marco's limp hand from where it hung lifelessly off the bed.
He was holding that hand when they moved him back again.
With a stricken look in his eyes, he just stood there for a . Lenski was getting up from the floor.
Then Dylan spotted Marco's rosary...
It lay on the floor on the other side of the bed.
The next thing he knew, four large men were holding him pinned to a wall, back out in the hallway.
Marco's rosary was still in one clenched fist.
The Hockey-player-turned-coach paced back and forth in the hallway like a tiger in a cage.
Every now and then someone else came out with trays of things, or went in to relieve someone else. Dylan tried to get information from them, but they were all rushing and would only tell him not to worry; things were going as well as could be expected.
He thought if heard that one more time he might hurt someone!
Mrs. Micalchuk and Mrs. Del Rossi finally arrived together, with Paige and Alex following them into the special section of the hospital where this still new form of childbirth is done separately from the 'normal' ones.
They had to be cleared by security to enter this section of the hospital; it was immediate family only, and you had to show your name-tag, which had to be passed through a machine and 'cleared' as G. I.(government issued).
Alex and Paige were of course arguing; Paige through clenched teeth, Alex rolling her eyes and smirking as usual.
"Why did you try to pick a fight with that guard, you knew I had your name-tag?" Paige fumed.
"Oh, c'mon babe, you know something about uniforms just sets me off, I wasn't really going to take it all way to a fight, not this soon in the game!" Alex said, the last part almost under her breath.
"Game, game! Alex this is hardly a game. This..."
"Paige, you know I'm just ...nervous, o.k.? Like...the threats I made when you were having our little rug-rat!"
"How dare you refer to our daughter as a rug-rat!
"Paige, babe, chill o.k.?" By now she'd spotted Dylan, and from the looks of his hospital gown, and the way his cap and face-mask were shoved into his back pocket, she could tell there was already trouble...
Marie-Elise reached her son first, and put her hands on either side of his face to draw it down onto her shoulder. She knew as soon as she saw him that something had gone wrong; in a situation like this, wrong could cover a lot of things...
Just then a doctor emerged from the delivery-room; he had a chart in his hand, and a wary look on his face, that intensified as he caught site of Dylan.
Mrs. Del Rossi went to him first, and he looked relieved to be able to deal with her instead of Dylan; distraught husbands always made Dr. Soames a little anxious, and after what Dylan had done to his colleague, he really didn't want to have to deal with him.
"Yes, Rossi, you son will be fine, there were just one or two minor...complications, nothing unexpected really, just, well his system is rather more resistant to pain meds than we expected, even after working with him these many months. We have everything under control now, however and we're about to move to the next stage.
Here, he stopped and looked,rather apprehensively at Dylan.
"I must tell you that our patient.." He was cut off by a glaring Alex;
"His NAME, is Marco."
This was spoken with such venom, that Dr. Soames froze for a moment, and looked round to find five pairs of eyes glaring at him.
He swallowed, had the decency to look apologetic, as he continued..
"Marco, has opted for full anesthesia."
He looked rather shamefacedly at Dylan when he said this.
Mrs. Del Rossi, one hand coming up, covering her mouth looked at Dylan with worried, questioning eyes.
For a moment Marco's face, eyes widened in surprise, then contorted with pain, flashed through Dylan's mind.
"Dylan?" Rosalia had come over to him, placed a hand on his arm as she looked up at him.
"Full anesth.." Dylan stopped, swallowing, getting hold of himself a little more.
"The epidural didn't work like...it took longer to kick in than we expected..."
Elise's hand tightened on her son's shoulder, though she said nothing, simply waiting; knowing by the look on his face, and the tension in his body...that... there was ...more...
Dylan took hold of Rosalia's hand, his other hand holding his mothers; blinking tears back, he looked at both of them: "There was an argument."..he began, and had to stoop and clear his throat.
"We had an argument..."
By the time he finished, Father 'Mo had arrived.
Dr. Soames came back and they were all shown into a waiting-room.
Dylan couldn't just sit there, and pacing didn't help.
Standing up suddenly, he looked at their priest, silently begging him to understand.
'Mo gestured for him to go ahead.
There was no one else in the shadowy quiet room.
The candles flickered softly.
The scent of incense lingered like a memory...
Dylan walked slowly forward...
When he got to the railing, he knelt, resting his elbows on it.
His clasped hands pressed against his trembling lips, but the sobs were still loud in that silence...
He whispered his one-word prayer between each sob.
"Please...please...please...