Chapter 5: again month nine

Lorelai and Emily were in exactly the same position when Luke found them a few minutes later, only Lorelai was groaning more.

On one hand Luke was relieved when he finally found them, on the other hand he was shocked by the view. Lorelai´s forehead was covered with sweat and she was groaning because of the pain. He had never seen her like this.

He hurried over to them and kneeled down in front of Lorelai.

"Lorelai, what happened?" He asked and reached out with his right hand to caress her cheek and placed his left hand over hers, on her belly. She immediately slid her finger through his and squeezed his hand hard. She lifted her head slowly off her mother's shoulder and glanced at her for a second.

"I...I don't know. I think... the contractions started." She had to pause while she spoke to breathe.

"They started this hard? Out of nowhere?" Luke glanced at Emily, and she looked down. He knew something was up. She looked guilty.

"Yes... I just...and then...the baby...our baby...auuuuuu!" She squeezed his hand even harder when another contraction hit her and more tears fell from her eyes when she closed them.

"I'm taking you to the hospital!" With that he stood up, then slid one hand under her left shoulder, the other one under her knees and slowly lifted her up. She slung her arms around his neck and grasped his shirt.

Emily also stood up and took her daughter's bag and her purse and followed Luke, who walked to the exit as fast as he could with Lorelai in his arms.

"Everything will be fine, darling. They will give you something against the pain and then maybe we will see our baby today. You will hold our baby today. And it will be fine. Healthy and beautiful and we will finally know if we have a daughter or a son..." He spoke softly and gentle to her, only wanting her to calm down. And somehow it worked. When they arrived at the car she was still in pain, but no longer panicked.

Somehow he managed to open the car, with Lorelai still in his arms. He wanted to put her down on the front seat, when Emily worked up the courage to speak again.

"Luke, when you put her down in the back, she can somehow make herself more comfortable and I can look after her while you drive..?" It wasn't an order, but a question.

Luke looked at Lorelai and she simply nodded.

Emily took the seat behind the driver's seat and then Luke put Lorelai down on the backseat. Emily turned a little bit, so that Lorelai could lean against her.

She took her mother's hands, and although she still thought that her mother was somehow responsible for the situation she found herself in right now, she was also thankful that she was with her at that moment. For the first time her mother was there, helping her without accusing or judging her.

She could not remember that Emily had ever been there when she had been sick. There had always been somebody who did that job for her. But right now she was here, holding her hands during the contractions and stroking her hair when they were over.

Luke drove fast, but careful. It was good that they were already in Hartford. The hospital was just a few minutes away from the mall and Luke felt a little bit relieved when they arrived there.

Lorelai got out of the car with Emily's help and Luke waited for her, so he could carry her over to the hospital. Again Emily followed them.

They had nearly arrived at the main entrance, when he suddenly felt something wet on the arm he had under her legs.

"Oh god, Lorelai is that blood? Are you bleeding?" He screamed shocked.

For the first time Lorelai smiled. It was a weak smile, but she smiled.

"No, honey, my water just broke. I´m sorry!" She told him gently and caressed his cheek with her index finger. But just a second later, when she felt the next contraction, she dug her nails in his shirt and buried her head in the crook of his neck, groaning.

Twenty minutes later, after some examinations, Lorelai was brought into the delivery room.

Before Luke followed her, he went over to Emily who sat in a chair, a worried look on her face.

"They are bringing her into the delivery room now. They said that she must have missed the first contractions. We're lucky, it's not a precipitate labor. The baby is fine. She´s already fully dilated, so I have to go in. Could you call Rory and Sookie? Sookie's number is on the speed dial of Lorelai's cell-phone, either the 5 or the 6..."

"I will find it Luke. And I will call them. Now go and help your wife deliver your baby." Emily answered him with a small smile. Her daughter and her grandchild would be fine. She opened Lorelai's purse and took out her cell-phone for the second time that day.

When Luke went into the delivery room, the doctor told Lorelai that she could start to push now. Because everything went so fast they hadn't been able to give her anything against the pain.

"Nooo... my husband..." Lorelai got out, before she screamed again: another contraction.

"I'm here, darling, I'm here!" Luke told her, placed a kiss on her forehead and took her hand.

"Now push!" the doctor told her again and this time she followed his instructions.

"Aaaaaaaaahhh!"

"Breathe, darling, breathe!" Luke whispered in her ear.

"Auuu, that hurts!"

Then she let her head fall back against the bed again.

"You´re doing so well. It will be over soon." He kissed her forehead again.

Emily tried for the tenth time to call Rory. She had tried at her dorm in Yale, then her cell phone, but only the mailbox answered. She decided to leave a message on both the answering machine and her mailbox.

Then she flipped through Lorelai´s phonebook in the cell-phone to find Sookie's number. Tears sprang into her eyes when the next three numbers appeared on the screen. The first one was of some pizza service the third one said "mum" and the second one "loveofmylife´s diner." Then she found Sookie's number.

Sookie screamed so loud that Emily thought she would never hear anything with her right ear when she told her that Lorelai was having the baby today. Sookie promised her that she would make sure that somebody would take care of the Inn and that she would keep trying to call Rory.

Then she dialed a number she knew very well. The moment she heard Richard's voice on the phone she started to sob and explained to him what had happened. At first Richard could not believe it, but then he told her he would come as fast as possible.

"I don´t want anymore. I want it to be over. Get this baby out of me!" Lorelai yelled. It hurt and she was exhausted.

"Just a few more good pushes and it is over." the doctor told her.

"You've been telling me this for at least five hours and nothing is over. Get it out of me! I don't care how, just do it! Now!" Lorelai yelled.

"Mrs. Danes you've been in the delivery room for only fifteen minutes. And the baby is crowning already. Just a few more pushes and it will be over. I promise." The doctor tried to encourage her.

"I don't give a damn what you pr..." Lorelai started, but Luke interrupted her.

"Lorelai, you can already see our baby´s head. Come on, I know that it hurts and if I could I would take the pain away from you, but you have to push. Then we can hold our baby." He smiled reassuringly at her and then kissed her, this time on the mouth.

When the next contraction came she pushed again while Luke rubbed her back and pushed her forward a little bit, so that it was easier for her to push.

"The head is out!" the doctor told them.

Luke took a step towards Lorelai's feet and then leaned forward a bit, still holding her hand.

"Oh my god!" He whispered and was choked up when he saw the baby's head.

Richard still did not really believe what Emily had told him when he saw his wife sitting on a chair in the hospital, her head in her hands, still crying.

He sat beside her taking her hands off her face.

"So it is really true." He stated in a husky voice. He was sure that any moment he would wake up and it would just have been another dream about Lorelai. When she ran away with Rory years ago he had had to be strong for Emily, who couldn't get out of bed for a month.

And after their final blow out with Lorelai nearly a year ago, it had pretty much been the same situation. Emily had not been lying in bed all day she had tried to be strong, like it did not affect her, that her daughter had shut her out for the second time. But, of course he knew that his wife had still tried to call Lorelai every day, although she had promised him to stop. She had tried everything to get information from Rory, and one day when he came home he found her in Lorelai's old bedroom.

So he had tried to be strong again, and while he had succeeded during the day, he failed at night. Nightmares of Lorelai and Luke being hurt in a car accident or Lorelai dying by some disease, that neither he nor Emily knew about, woke him up at least once a week. He always felt relieved when Rory came and answered Emily's question "How is your mother?" with a simple "Fine".

Now he was sitting here, with his sobbing wife, who was responsible for the fact that their daughter was having her baby three weeks earlier than she was supposed to.

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Emily. That was all he could do at the moment.

Emily took it and dried her tears. She knew that Richard wouldn't find it suitable for her to sit crying in a chair in a hospital. So she sat up straight and composed herself.

"She's been in the delivery room for almost half an hour now. And nobody is telling me anything!" She said, nearly in her typical Emily Gilmore manor.

"Is Luke with her?" Richard spoke gentle, but with an edge in his voice that she noticed. He blamed her.

"Yes, he is. He carried her to the car and then, after he drove here, he carried her into the hospital. Lorelai told me to call him when the contractions started," she answered.

"Why were you at the mall? I thought you had a DAR meeting?" This time he left no more doubt that he blamed her for what had happened.

"It had been cancelled, because most of the others have the flu. And I needed to run some errands, so I went to the mall. I was in the bookstore when I saw her. She had just bought a book and then went outside and sat on a bench. I followed her." Emily succeeded to suppress the tears this time.

"Mmmh, of course you would do that. What did she buy? A baby book?" He stayed calm on the outside, like always. The more silent he would become, the worse it was.

"No, she bought this book." Emily handed him the book. "She was looking at the picture on page 134. The one with all these women. She was smiling while she looked at it."

Richard opened the book and found the picture.

"Encarna and her three problem-children: Rana, Sara and Laila," he read aloud what was written under the picture.

"The artist gave these three young women the same blue eyes like Lorelai's are". This time his voice was shaking.

"Push not so hard this time." The doctor instructed her.

With the next contraction she did like she had been told.

"Aaaaahhh...Oh Gooooddd!" she screamed when she pushed the baby out of her.

A few seconds later they heard the first scream of their child and both Lorelai and Luke started to cry.

He kneeled down beside her.

"Thank you...thank you..thank you!" He said while he placed kisses all over her face.

She took his face in her hands and kissed him a little bit longer on the lips.

"I love you so much!" He told her after they broke the kiss.

"I love you, too!" She whispered and smiled.

"Do you want to cut the umbilical cord?" The doctor interrupted them.

"Uhm...yeah..sure." Luke said and the nurse showed him how to do it.

Then the doctor placed the baby in his arms.

"Here I'm sure mommy wants to see the little one!"

Luke looked down at the baby in his arms. Lorelai watched him carefully. She had wondered the whole time during her pregnancy how he would look at their child when he would see it for the first time. And finally this moment was here.

He bit his lower lip and then the brightest smile Lorelai had ever seen appeared on his face. He looked so proud and happy and she wished she had a camera to catch that exact look.

Then he walked up to Lorelai with their child in his arms.

"Hey, baby, look! There´s your amazing mommy!" He said and then placed the baby carefully on her chest.

TBC