Chapter 25:
Sam POV-
Right now, I'm 17 weeks pregnant, but supposedly 25 weeks, and, developmentally, 28 weeks, which means that I am now within the 25-30 week estimate our doctor had given us for when I would go into labor.
Honestly, with all that's happened, it's difficult to remember that I have only known I was pregnant for 12 weeks.
And, right now, there is no doubt to anyone that I am, indeed, very pregnant. More pregnant than someone who is supposed to be only a little over halfway through her pregnancy should be.
Also, I think Mrs. Fenton is starting to pick up on the fact that my timeline seems a little askew, just judging from the looks she keeps giving me when she thinks I'm not looking. But, whatever she's thinking, she hasn't shared her suspicions with Danny or myself.
Since Paulina's reveal of her "official" pregnancy, and since my baby shower, thankfully, most of the conflict revolving around my pregnancy has disappeared. And now with two girls pregnant out of the 50 girls in our grade, the teachers are just trying to get to the end of the school year without anyone else getting knocked up.
Of course, they could be more subtle, the four "abstinence/safe sex" assembles we have had since I was revealed to be pregnant, are somewhat more accusatory than they should be.
Anyway, with the end of my pregnancy so incredibly close, it's hard not to be anxious. On top of that, my feet are swollen, my back hurts, and I have to pee, all the time.
"Sam…I think you should just…you know, relax," Danny told me, always worried that I might be straining myself. I merely rolled my eyes. My feet might hurt, but I cannot get comfortable on the couch or in the bed or anywhere unless I'm standing up, as a result, I continue pacing the floor.
"Danny, I'm not comfortable. I have to stand," I told him, again.
He sighed, "Well, do you at least want to get out of the house? You've been pacing like that for twenty minutes."
"Okay," I agreed, feeling the sudden need to get out of the rut that I had, no doubt, worn into the carpet with my pacing, "Let's go to the park."
He helped my down the front steps of his house, which was actually pretty necessary considering I can't actually see my feet or the steps beneath them anymore.
So, as I suggested, we went to the park. On a Sunday afternoon like today, there weren't very many people around except for the occasional jogger or dog walker, and the kids and their parents playing Frisbee over the hill.
The birds chirped lightly in the trees and I closed my eyes, listening to their cheerful songs.
Finally, when the sun came out and the cool overcast turned into a warm, muggy, haze, we decided to go home. Danny helped me stand up off of the bench, holding my hand.
But…I must have stood up too fast, or maybe I had low blood sugar or pressure or something, but I teetered on my feet, black spots dancing across my vision.
"Sam? Are you okay?" Danny asked in concern.
I didn't reply. I couldn't. My head was throbbing so badly and my vision continued to cloud and darken. I tried to feel for the bench behind me in order to sit back down and wait for the sensation to pass, but my knees buckled and my legs gave out beneath me.
"SAM!" I heard Danny exclaim in panic, but his voice sounded far off.
Danny POV-
Sam just collapsed. I got her onto the ground as gently as I possibly could without injuring her or our children. Something was wrong. Very wrong, I just didn't know what it was. Her breathing was shallow. I called 911.
I didn't know what to do, I knew I could fly off for help, but I didn't want to leave her here.
Considering the size of the town we live in, the ambulance should arrive any minute, so I carefully checked her pulse. It was faint. Then her breathing stopped completely.
Thankfully, I knew CPR from health class.
"Come on, Sam," I muttered frantically as I did compressions to her chest.
I heard the sirens approaching and people began to crowd around where I was giving her CPR, but, of course, no one offered to help. In a matter of seconds, EMS was at my side, telling me to move over and let them take it from there.
They brought out an AED and began to attach the pads to her skin.
The machine beeped, indicating that it was ready to administer a shock and Sam's body lurched as the electrical energy surged through her body. Still nothing.
The machine beeped again, ready to give another shock.
Again, Sam lurched. But this time the machine gave an indication that it was picking up her pulse.
Suddenly, Sam took in a sharp breath and the heart-rate monitor spiked with activity. She opened her eyes, which, for only a moment, were bright, neon green, before changing back to their original amethyst color. Although I don't think any of the EMS team noticed, however, at this moment, it wouldn't matter to me what they did or did not notice. Sam looked around frantically before her eyes finally landed on me.
I was kneeling at her side before she even said a word.
"Oh my gosh, Sam, what happened?!" I asked her. She shook her head.
"I don't know, one minute I'm fine and the next…" she looked around.
"We need to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible," one of the EMS people said to the other.
"Why? What's wrong?!" I demanded.
"Hypotension. Her blood pressure is dangerously low. If we don't get her to the hospital quickly, both she and her baby could die," the woman told me.
Sam looked at me fearfully, I tried to give her as reassuring of a look as I could muster, but, right now, I could barely reassure myself. The EMS team quickly loaded her into the back of the ambulance and I climbed in behind her.
I have never been more thankful to live in a small town. The hospital was only a few minutes away. Sure, it's a small hospital, but they have everything that we need, including a maternity ward, where Sam was immediately wheeled. Doctors scrambled around us.
"She is going to need an emergency C-section! Her blood pressure is already low, and still dropping!" the EMS woman told the doctors who had assembled.
The doctor on hand nodded and turned to me.
"Are you the father?" she asked me.
I nodded.
"Okay, you," she pointed to another nurse, "Take him to go get some scrubs. We need to do this fast.
Sam glanced at me, panic in her eyes.
"It's okay," I told her, "I'll be right there." And with that, I ran off after the other nurse to put on the scrubs, not wanting to waste any time.
In a matter of minutes, I had put the blue scrubs over my clothes and was in in the operating room, standing next to Sam, who gripped my hand tightly. Then they gave Sam a general anesthetic, and she became sedated. I felt her hand go loose in mine, but I continued to hold it tightly, just so I could still feel her pulse. I worried that, maybe with enhanced ghost healing, the anesthetic would wear off and she would wake up in the middle of the surgery, but it held as the doctor's made their incisions. I also worried that her blood might have been tinted green. But actually, there was very little blood, and, although it was still partially green, it was hard to notice if you weren't looking for it, and, with the hurry the doctors were in, I doubt they even noticed.
The doctors worked quickly. With the fear that the babies were under distress, they had to have them out quickly. And they did.
I would say that they had the babies out in less than ten minutes.
The nurses quickly cleaned off the babies. I heard both of them cry, two distinctly different sounds, but both stopped after a minute. The nurses then put tags around their ankles and wrapped them in different colored blankets before handing them to me. The medical staff almost seemed surprised that the babies were nearly full-term, and healthy enough not to be placed in the NICU.
I sat in the chair adjacent to the bed to more easily hold and support them. They were so small.
Both were born with only a little black hair in a swirl on the tops of their heads.
They both had their eyes open, looking around the room curiously, although, several of the nurses assured me that they probably couldn't see much more than my face.
The smaller one, Elizabeth, in her pink blanket looked at me, her brilliant eyes searching my face. Her eyes were somewhere in between mine and Sam's: a light…I believe the color is considered periwinkle.
Grayson's eyes, were exactly like mine, in fact, nearly everything about him looked like me while, Elizabeth maintained more of Sam's features. However, both me and Sam were present in both of them.
I looked up to see that the doctors had finished stitching Sam up just as the anesthesia wore off.
She blinked at the unfamiliar room and eventually found me in the dark, giving me a small smile.
"Danny—" she trailed off when she saw the two babies in my arms. She smiled, wider than I think I've ever seen Sam smile, and I gently handed them over to her. She held them in her arms, just looking at them and they looked back, seeming utterly transfixed in each other's' gaze.
One of the nurses broke the moment.
"I'm sorry, but I need to have the names for the babies for the birth certificates," she told us.
Sam and I sighed and I quickly wrote down the names because Sam's hands were kind of full at the moment.
"Danny," Sam told me when the nurse had left, "You should call you parents."
'Oops,' I thought, having forgotten, in all the excitement, that my parents and sister would want to see their grandchildren and niece and nephew. I stepped out into the hall, dialing up my home phone number.
"Danny?" Jazz asked answering the phone on the second ring.
"Hey Jazz, could you, mom, and dad all come down to the hospital?" I asked smugly.
"The hospital? Why? Is something wrong?" she asked in concern.
"No, nothing's wrong. But you're all going to want to get down here," I replied.
Jazz paused for a moment. "Did Sam go into labor? Are the babies there?" she demanded.
"Yep, the babies are here, so if you guys want to see them, you better get down here quick," I told her.
Jazz yelled to my parents before he had even gotten off of the phone.
"Okay, Danny, we'll be there soon!" she squealed in delight and hung up the phone.
Sam and I and our babies were more to a more…friendly room one more brightly lit and without operating equipment around the bed.
"Here Danny," Sam told me handing over our pink-blanketed baby, "You can take Elizabeth."
I took my daughter in my arms, sitting in the open chair and waiting for my family to show up, and, sure enough, my parents and sister arrived several minutes later.
Sam POV-
The way Danny looked at Lizzie when I handed her over to him, I could tell she already has him wrapped around her finger, as cliché as that may be.
He smiled fondly at him and she looked up at him with wondering, curious, eyes.
I smiled to myself, looking down at the baby in my arms. Strangely enough, Grayson had already fallen asleep.
'This is going to be our easy baby,' I decided as I watched him sleep.
Then Danny's family came in bearing, even more gifts, and Grayson woke up. And, although he fidgeted a little, he didn't fuss or cry.
Jazz and Mrs. Fenton immediately fussed over the babies, each taking one from Danny and I's hands, while Mr. Fenton seemed content to stand back and watch the scene as a whole. Although I did not miss him giving Danny a congratulatory hug.
"It's surprising how healthy they are, after being born this early. These babies are full-term size," Mrs. Fenton pointed out, thankfully, I had been preparing for this sort of question for several weeks now, so the lie was not obvious on my face.
"Well…" I pretended to act sheepish, "I guess we must have…miscalculated."
Mrs. Fenton pursed her lips at the obvious disapproval at the fact that I had just implied that Danny and I had slept together more than just the once when we were "drunk," but, at the same time, she didn't seem fully convinced.
"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter now. They're here and they're healthy, that's all that matters."
I agreed. Watching my new family, and Danny's family together. The love in this room was nearly tangible and could be seen radiating off of everyone's faces.
Yes, for right now, that's all that matters, everything else can wait.