When we got to the hospital that doctors wanted to see Alice right away. We sort of knew ever since she started swelling up to twice the normal size that this would be stressful and the doctor said it would probably be best if she was by herself just to start off with, so I waited in the ingeniously named waiting room for the others, and they came along sooner enough. Gil seemed more on edge than usual, Break was standing unusually close to Sharon and shooting glares at any doctor who dared to look at her, Sharon was hanging her head low in shame and Ada was being Ada. I think I almost suffocated when Ada hugged me, or at least cracked two ribs. She was more excited than I was, probably more about the fact that she could tell all these wonderful stories about her niece or nephew at dinner parties all the time once this was over than anything else. Sharon was slightly more contained, Gil was just plain uptight and Break didn't really seem to care less.
We settled down and then I decided to confiscate the camera Break brought because I thought it was creepy. Alice always went on about how weird she thought it was that women actually asked for their births to be filmed. I have to say that I agree with her- it's pretty gross. Anyway, we got talking after a while. I was even more tense than Gil somehow and I kept thinking about Alice in the room. She'd hate it there, with just the strange doctors staring at her and analysing her with the cold, detached efficiency that doctors seemed to have. Gil noticed how I kept looking over at the door and told me to calm my farm and also that I now knew what it felt like to go without cigarettes. Everyone else tried to absorb me in the conversation after that to keep me distracted and after a while I gave in. We got chatting about random things, sort of whatever crossed our minds, and then Ada asked me if I was 'pumped to be a Dad' or something, and that was when I stopped talking. Alice and I hadn't actually talked about it that way over the last nine months. It was always 'the kid', sometimes 'our kid', and sometimes we'd talk about how great it'd be once we moved out into the new house with the kid and stuff but we'd never actually contemplated being parents.
I felt sick. What if I turned out to be no better than my dad? What if Alice took after Glen, the only parent she'd ever known? What if I just failed parenthood altogether? As soon as I started looking at the future that way it seemed so much bigger than it really was. After tonight, it would be my responsibility to raise a kid to be the best he/she could be and be in charge of the welfare of someone else apart from Alice, actually love someone apart from Alice.
But what if tonight didn't go right? What if the kid died? What if… oh God, what if Alice died? I felt even worse thinking about either of those things, because even if I hadn't actually met the kid yet, even though I wasn't technically a father yet, I still felt protective of the baby. I didn't want him to get hurt because he was a part of me and Alice and we had both worked our butts off the last nine months to make sure this would go perfectly and we had both agreed that we would work our butts off for as long as we had to to make sure the kid had the best life possible.
I asked if Break would like to get a drink with me. He gave me a queer look and Gil looked hurt, but I brushed it off and lead him out to the water fountain. I asked him if he'd felt this bad when he found out he was going to be a father. For the first time since I've known him he actually smiled genuinely and not in a creepy way and just said, "You'll be great."
Sharon later on told me that he had confessed to her that he had never been particularly fazed when he had been told one of his five wives was pregnant because he was Break and Break rarely cared about anything.
It didn't matter anymore, though, because once we came back into the waiting room everyone was on their feet and looking at a nurse who stood in the middle of a little circle they had all formed. She saw me and opened her mouth to talk but I nodded, taking both my cup and Break's to give to Alice and went through the door into the maternity ward to join Alice.
The heavy door swung shut behind me and I walked a few paces down the corridor before running back on my steps and bursting through the door, screaming something along the lines of "LET'S DO THIS!" and doing a little dance and thus setting off a mini party in the waiting room among the friends who had come to support us. When I moved back into the corridor, the nurse was shaking her head in amusement. I grinned sheepishly and she lead me down the corridor to the room where my first kid would be born.
A/N: Cliffhanger loves you. 3