AN: Oh you know you're in trouble when you start plagarizing your own work... lol. Any of you who consistently read me will get that after you've read. But I wanted to address something else really quickly before we get to the chapter. Over the last couple chapters a lot of you have been mentioning in your reviews that you want more of the other characters coming in and to find out what's going on with them. And as much as I hate to say it, this is one request I will not be taking. I really would like to be able to go into those sorts of things, but if anyone is mentioned then it will only be in passing. This is a story (if this series of oneshots qualifies as a story) about Artie and Tina. I'm sorry guys, but if I started delving into everyone else's lives this already runaway train of a story would end up getting even more out of control. Hope no one is too horribly offended by that, I really am sorry, it's just not territory that I think this story needs to delve into.
The next time Tina was broken, I decided I was so done with hospitals.
It was early November and I was still in complete shock as I got out of my car. I had been at work when Tina had called me and I could still hear her frantic voice in my head. I had been fighting against the nerves on the entire drive up to the hospital, going through all the rational explanations to the situation in my head. Once I had convinced myself that this was not something scary, I felt just a little bit of excitement. And then I would remember the fear in her voice and the happiness would be dampened again.
The receptionist gave me directions to the room and when I got there Tina was lying in bed, and our next-door neighbor was talking to her soothingly. "Artie," Tina said before she'd even turned to see me, and I was, not for the first time, blown away by how she was so good at catching the faintest noises my chair made even over any other background noises, sounds that other people didn't even notice. It was a talent she had honed to an unnatural perfection over the years, and often gave people the impression that she could sense me coming instead of hear me. Jack turned it into a comic book joke by calling it her "Artie-sense." I'd had to explain to her what it meant when he asked her if it was tingling.
"Hey, Tee, how you feeling?" I asked, trying to sound casual. In way of an answer she forced a shaky smile but didn't say anything. "Thanks for bringing her up, Trish," I added, glancing up at our neighbor. "There's no way I could have gotten home from work and then all the way back up here fast enough."
"It's no problem," Trish replied easily. "That's what I'm here for." I smiled gratefully. Trish was a stay-at-home mom who'd offered to lend Tina a hand now that she was out on maternity leave while I was at work, in the chance that something happened. She squeezed Tina's hand and touched my shoulder on her way out of the door.
"Tee, what happened?" I asked, moving the rest of the distance to the bed.
"The contractions started coming really close together," she said and as if proving the point I actually saw her stomach muscles seize. She winced and when she looked down at me she looked scared again. "There's something wrong. I can tell."
"Well you're a little early," I said, "but they said anytime after thirty-four weeks was fine."
"No, it's something else," she said insistently. One hand rested on her contracting stomach while the other reached for me. I tugged off a glove and took her hand, and felt her close her fingers around my hand tightly. "Artie, there's something wrong. Our baby. What if –"
"Shh, don't start that stuff," I said, calm but firm. "We're not doing what ifs. It'll be okay." There was another contraction and I winced along with her as she tried to crush my fingers. When she opened her eyes again there were tears in them and her panic was plain on her face. Before either of us could say anything the doctor came into the room to check on her.
The doctor looked a little concerned and he came up to talk to us. The way he explained it, her body was trying to induce labor without actually being ready for it and without the baby being ready either. I didn't actually understand a lot of what he was trying to say, except that something really was wrong. He said they would try some sort of medication that was supposed to make her dilate, but if it didn't start working quickly the unnatural labor could really hurt both Tina and especially the baby.
The moment the doctor left after injecting her with the medicine, she looked at me and I saw she was crying. "I'm sorry," she said. I tried to cut her off but she just kept talking, ignoring my protest. "They said it was risky for me to have kids. I should have known there was another reason. This is it. I can't even do it right and it's hurting the baby and –"
"Tina," I said loudly and she let her words trail off into sobs. "Don't do that to yourself, please. It will be okay." I didn't think it was important to tell her that while I was being calm and strong for her, inside I was sending every possible prayer I could skyward, resisting the urge to reach for the miniature St. Jude medallion that was stitched into the back inside of the glove in my lap.
I kept talking to her as composedly as I could, trying to keep her distracted from what was going on. Every time she was hit with another contraction she would make a pained gasp and tighten her grip around my hand, and I could tell that each fresh wave made her fear grow. It had only been ten minutes when the doctor came back in to check again and this time his expression was a little grim.
"She's not dilating, we've got to prep her for surgery," he said and I felt Tina's hand grip harder against mine, a scared noise escaping her.
"Surgery?" I asked faintly, trying to get answers. Having answers made truths easier to comprehend, and all of this was coming so fast there wasn't much I'd made sense of in the last half hour.
"Emergency cesarean," the doctor said with a nod. "Her body isn't going through the stages of labor correctly. We've got to get the baby out before it seriously hurts either of them."
I felt like I'd been hit in the chest, but I instantly turned to Tina. She looked so scared I thought she might be on the verge of fainting. "This surgery, it'll make everything okay though, right?" I asked desperately when the doctor had signaled a couple nurses into the room and they started preparing to roll the bed out of the room.
The doctor met my eyes and I saw his answer there before he said anything. "It should," he said vaguely, but what he meant was 'it's the only shot you've got.' I nodded weakly.
They started moving the bed and Tina held my hand tighter. "No, don't go," she said frantically. Her eyes were wide, or as wide as her eyes are capable of getting, and her voice was very near hysterical.
"Tee, it's going to be okay," I said as soothingly as I could.
"Please, Artie," she said and her voice broke. "I can't do this alone. Please."
Nodding, I pressed a kiss to her hand. "Don't worry, honey, I'll be there," I said and apparently I sounded confident enough in this because she nodded and let me slip my hand out of hers. The nurses pushed the bed out of the room and I rolled up next to the doctor before he could leave. "I need to be there."
"We generally don't allow people in the operating room," he said with a sympathetic frown.
"I won't get in the way," I said assuredly. "I'll stay up by her head. If my chair is too bulky I can transfer to a different chair and you can move mine out of the way." His frown hadn't eased but I could see something softening in his eyes. "Please, I've been there for her through everything since we were thirteen years old. She's more scared than she's ever been; I can't leave her alone now. Please."
The doctor stared at me thoughtfully for a long moment and then he nodded. "I'll see what we can work out," he said and then gestured for me to follow him. I felt a wave of relief sweeping through me when I grabbed my wheels and pushed myself after him. Fifteen minutes later I was being pushed into the operating room with my clothes covered in a pair of overly-large medical scrubs.
Tina had already been watching the door when we came in, and I knew she'd been waiting for me. Even though she still looked terrified, I saw the relief in her eyes and I smiled. The doctor and a nurse helped me to move from my wheelchair into a different chair, because it was higher and I couldn't quite get myself up. The nice part was the extra height meant that now my head was actually above the edge of the mattress and I could see Tina's face without having to tilt my head back. They tucked the chair up as close to the bed as they could get it and I was able to rest my one arm on the bed without having to lean forward.
"Told you I'd be here," I said, taking her hand again.
Even though she was crying still, she gave me a faint smile. "Thank you," she breathed, so quietly I had to read it on her lips because I hadn't actually heard it. She gasped aloud at another contraction. "Oh God, it hurts so much," she said when it eased up.
"It'll be over soon," I said, although I had no idea if that was true. After checking that I wouldn't slip if I let go of the chair with my other hand, I reached over and pushed her hair away from her sweaty forehead. She leaned her face into my touch, so I left my hand where it was.
I didn't pay any attention to the actual surgery. I heard the doctor and nurses talking, saying different medical terms that I wasn't sure I wanted to understand, and once out of the corner of my eye I'd caught a glimpse of a scalpel around the partition they'd hung above her stomach to keep Tina from watching. Instead I spent the time trying to keep her calm, keeping her focused on me and not what was happening on the other side of that little green curtain.
At one point I'd noticed the doctor's voice sounded anxious, and I tried to hide the fear it sparked in me by pulling Tina's hand to my face and kissing it. My heart was pounding to the point of being painful, but she didn't need to know that. I had to be the strong one again. I blocked off the words that the doctor was saying, not really sure I wanted to know what was happening but needing to know at the same time.
"Artie," Tina said breathlessly and I lifted my eyes to meet hers. "Love you forever, right?"
"Forever and ever, no matter what," I promised, awkwardly holding myself up with my elbows on the mattress so I could lean forward and kiss her. It was straining my arms to stay like that, but I rested my forehead against her burning one. The sound of her ragged, uneven breathing made me scared, knowing it meant she was starting to panic again, and I did the only thing I could think of to help her find a steady rhythm again.
"When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be…"
I sang it so quietly under my breath that I was sure if my mouth hadn't been so close to her ear she wouldn't have heard. She squeezed my hand in acknowledgement and by the time I hit the chorus she was timing her breathing with the tempo of the music.
Midway through the second verse there was a high scream and my voice stuck in my throat. For a moment I didn't dare lift my head to look, just in case it shattered the illusion and it turned out I'd only imagined in. Then I finally pulled back, easing myself carefully back onto the chair, and looked over. Two of the nurses had taken a bundle out of the room with them, and the sound of the crying died away with their absence, while the doctor was still busy behind the curtain.
Tina's grip on my hand tightened with every second that passed. I lost the feeling in my fingers about forty-two seconds before one of the nurses finally came back in. "It looks like your baby is fine," she said and Tina's hand relaxed slightly. I winced as the circulation in my fingers made them tingle. "He's being looked over, just to make sure nothing's wrong, but he looks perfectly healthy."
I think at that point I said thank you about four times and started crying the second the nurse walked away. Tina had let her head fall back into the pillow, breathing a heavy sigh, but she smiled at me. "You were right," she said and I raised an eyebrow. "She said 'he.' It's a boy."
I couldn't help but laugh, and I pushed myself forward to kiss her again. "It's a boy," I echoed.
The doctor finished with the stitches, which is what I learned he was doing behind the curtain while we'd been talking, and not long after we were relocated to the room she'd been in before. As soon as we were alone Tina started getting scared again. "Should it take this long? What if there's something wrong? I hope he's okay. When will we get to see him?" I gave up trying to calm her down, because she wasn't actually listening to any of the answers I tried to give her anyway.
It hadn't even been ten minutes when the doctor showed up, and he smiled at us. "You've got yourself a tough little boy," he said. "Four and a half weeks early, and he is one-hundred-percent healthy."
"Can we see him?" I asked hopefully, but before the doctor could answer a nurse came into the room, pushing one of those clear plastic buckets on a silver stand. I sat up straighter because I knew what they were. I'd seen them before when my little sister and my nephews had been born. The nurse stopped it beside the bed and she scooped the squirming bundle of blankets out of it. Tina's eyes were bright as the nurse laid the baby in her arms. I propped myself on my elbows on the edge of the mattress, and she tilted slightly so I could see.
He was red from crying, but in the patches where that was fading away I could see he had skin that was just slightly less tanned than Tina's. The little patch of hair on the top of his head was dark, and when he opened his wide eyes they were dark, almost navy blue. I just stared in awe.
"Did you have a name chosen for him?" the doctor asked suddenly, and I looked up in surprise when Tina said yes. When I raised an eyebrow at her, she smiled and, by way of answer, hummed a bar of "Let It Be." I let out a quiet laugh and then glanced back at the doctor.
"Paul," I answered. "Paul Arthur Abrams." The doctor glanced between us in confusion, probably trying to figure out how I'd understood that, but he nodded and opened the folder in his arm. Turning away from him, I looked back at Tina and our baby again. He was staring up at her with those huge eyes, and she had an almost blindingly radiant smile on her face.
That was the next time Tina had been broken, and all of a sudden there was six-pounds-and-nine-ounces of other person that could fix her breaks.