"Do you ever think about the future?" Jenn asked, curled like a cat on a large velvet chair. She was gazing absently into the fire, the light dancing in her eyes, but she was clearly not seeing it at all.

Orli glanced up, surprised. They had ordered an enormous dinner, once he had convinced Jenn to give in to her cravings and not worry about watching her weight, and had since lapsed into a comfortable silence, listening to the crackling fire and watching the patterns it made on the wall. "Of course I think about the future," he answered her. "In fact…" He meant to produce the tickets to New Zealand he'd planned to give her tonight: He wanted to bring her, as well as Josh and Michelle, along for final Lord of the Rings reshoots. He meant to tell her how much she meant to him and how he wouldn't be able to bear a month's separation otherwise. He meant to tell her that he did think about the future, had been planning on this part of their future for months now.

But Jenn sat up straight on the chair. "I mean really think about it," she insisted. "Like, what happens when we die?"

This struck Orli as such a morbid question on their one-year anniversary that he almost laughed at its lunacy. But something told him Jenn was serious, in a rather queer mood related to late pregnancy, and that he might be slapped if he dared even smile. Years of acting school trained his features to smoothness until even his mood matched hers. "I think about it sometimes," he said thoughtfully. "But I try not to. It's rather depressing."

"Yeah…" Jenn murmured dreamily. "But sometimes you have to think about it, right? I mean… I don't know. I'm not ready to die. But it still scares me."

Orli was genuinely concerned. "Death scares you? At twenty-three?"

"Nah," Jenn muttered, still in that faraway, misty voice. "Death doesn't scare me. Dying scares me. Being forgotten once I'm dead, that scares me too. Other than that, I think I could handle it easily. I mean, I know I'm going to Heaven. But I don't want to be forgotten on Earth. I don't want everyone to mourn me. I just want to be remembered. I want to do something with my life, because I can never really be sure whether I'll be alive the next minute, right?"

Orli reached out and covered her hand. "You would never be forgotten, and you've already made more than enough difference to more than enough people."

"Not enough," Jenn muttered obstinately. "Hey, I decided something."

"Yes?" Orli asked patiently.

"I decided what song I want to play at my funeral," Jenn announced, almost as though she expected Orli to be happy for her.

He stared. "All right," he said finally, and waited for her to speak.

"I want This is Your Time from Michael W. Smith or Warning from Incubus," she said. "Okay?"

"I hope I'm not around for that," Orli ventured to say, "I don't want to plan your funeral. It would mean I'd have to live without you."

Jenn's eyes filled. "But I don't want to live without you," she cried.

Orli cringed inwardly; having never been in quite such a situation before, he had no idea what exactly he was expected to do. "We'll die at the same time, then," he soothed her, wincing at how stupid he sounded.

Jenn opened her mouth, wiping the tears out of her eyes, just as the doorbell rang. Orli jumped up, expecting it to be dinner. Jenn made to get up and help him, but he held up a hand to stop her. "Don't worry, the delivery people will help me bring it in. You're not supposed to be lifting much anyway."

"Are you really eating that much?" Jenn asked, completely forgetting about the previous topic of conversation, and apparently not planning to have dinner at all.

"Yes," Orli told her. "And you are helping."

Jenn groaned, but couldn't entirely suppress a laugh.

"So I have a question," Michelle began, then stopped, clearly waiting for someone to display interest in the fact that she'd spoken. Jenn chanced half a glance at her before returning her gaze to her novel. She was only mildly surprised when Michelle snatched it out of her hands, narrowly missing her nose. She looked up again, mildly indignant.

"What, Michelle?" she demanded, attempting to sound exasperated while fighting off a laugh.

Michelle held the latest issue of Cosmopolitan clenched in her left hand. Michelle didn't believe in Cosmo, but she said the articles "cracked her up." Now, she waved it around for emphasis as she asked, "Do people really do this? I mean, when they're having sex, do they actually stop to think, 'Okay, I've done this, what was the next step that magazine said?' I mean, isn't sex supposed to be like one of those things where you don't think about anything and sort of-"

"Let raw animal instincts take over?" Orli contributed.

Michelle looked shocked; Jenn misinterpreted her reasons. "Hey, Michelle, don't try to tell us you've never done it."

Michelle gave her a mild glare and addressed Orli. "That's exactly what I was thinking, I was actually getting ready to say."

Josh finally looked up. "I know I don't think about it," he said teasingly.

Michelle muttered something entirely incoherent, and Jenn decided it was definitely better not to ask for clarity. She shuddered, but it was no good. "I'm getting bad images!" she yelled.

Michelle reached over and swatted her. "Jenn! Shut up! We're in a restaurant!"

"Sitting next to a six-year-old boy and his mother, talking about wild sex," Orli contributed solemnly.

Michelle glanced up, looking abashed. "Oh. Dear." She smiled sweetly at the mother in question. "Sorry."

The mother glared at her, and Michelle looked offended. "I apologized," she insisted. "And quite charmingly. I thought."

Orli's eyebrows came together. "You overestimate your natural charm, Michelle."

She looked, if possible, even more offended.

"I still can't believe I'm really going to New Zealand," Jenn declared, neatly folding a shirt and tucking it into her third suitcase. It was June twenty-fifth, four days after the anniversary and two days after Michelle's unfortunate restaurant incident. Orli had presented her with a ticket over dinner on their anniversary. The two had narrowly avoided an argument over Jenn's "I'm pregnant and the babies are due any day, remember?" problem, but Orli had assured her that a private jet was a possible alternative, and Jenn did want to see New Zealand.

Orli glanced up. "Jennifer, is all this really necessary?" he asked, moving her first suitcase off the bed to make room for his small bag.

Jennifer looked scandalized. "We'll be gone for almost a month! I want to be prepared!"

"For what," Orli yelped, wincing as his voice squeaked, "the apocalypse?"

"For… whatever," Jenn answered dismissively. "You just never know."

Orli rolled his eyes in exasperation. "It's not like we'll be all by ourselves in the middle of the wilderness in the dead of winter. There are people there who can get stuff from the villages nearby. There's no need to pack everything you own."

"I like to be prepared," Jennifer insisted, and commenced ignoring him.

They both gathered their belongings in silence for the next ten minutes, until, without warning, Jennifer doubled over, clutching her stomach and gasping, her face contorted in obvious pain.

Orli ran out of the bathroom, a toothbrush in one hand and a razor in the other, looking alarmed. "Jenn, what's wrong?"

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Orli's face went pale as he remembered the words of the instructor at Planned Parenthood talking about childbirth: If you can't talk during the contractions, this is the real thing! The instructor, a pretty young woman with dark brown hair who was far to skinny to have ever given birth, had sounded chipper and delighted as she delivered this news, but Orli saw nothing chipper and delightful about it. Jenn looked to be in very real pain.

"Okay… we're going to the hospital," he announced, trying to sound bright and not at all worried. "Now." Jenn nodded; Orli had the feeling she would have rolled her eyes if she could have summoned the energy.

He sat in the waiting room, bored. The nurse had confirmed that this was the real thing, but since it was Jennifer's first child- children- it might well be a while. He had called Josh and Michelle twenty minutes ago, knowing how furious they would be if they missed this, but so far they had not arrived. Orli had taken to pacing, but that quickly became irritating, so he'd sat down grudgingly, glaring at everyone, especially the two pre-teen girls waiting for God-knew-what with their father and eyeing him hopefully. Orli slunk low in his seat, praying not to be recognized.

"Orlando!" someone called, and Orli groaned. That was what he needed, an announcement of who he was. He slid down even lower in his chair, wishing he could disappear, and was wholly surprised when he received a light smack in the head. Glancing up, he saw Josh towering over him, and Michelle staring in concern. "You're about to fall off that chair," she informed him, and he glared at her. Hastily she added, "But hey, if that's what you're going for, more power to ya." With a nod, she indicated the two chairs on either side of him. "Those for us?"

"Go for it," he said wearily. "We have a long wait."

"We brought stuff to do!" Michelle said cheerily, depositing a mesh bag full of books, puzzles, a portable CD player and a card deck on the chair she was supposed to sit on. "Actually… I think I may have to find the restroom."

"There's one across the hall," Orli told her, pointing.

"Thanks," Michelle said, and leapt up. She did not, however, enter the restroom, but walked right past it, around the corner and out of sight.

"What was up with that?" Orli asked Josh, puzzled.

Josh looked just as confused. "Maybe she missed it. Michelle has a terrible sense of direction."

"It's labeled," Orli felt compelled to point out. "I didn't think it was possible to miss it. I've already been in and out of the men's room twice, just for something to do. There are big signs on those doors."

Josh shrugged. "Don't worry too much about it. She'll be back eventually."

"If she can't even find the restroom," Orli protested, "how will she manage to find her way back here?"

Jenn sighed, irritated. She'd been in the waiting room for nearly four hours, or so she was told. Some lady who'd been let in barely an hour ago was being wheeled out.

"Hey," Jenn called to the passing nurse. "What's up with this? That woman came in like an hour ago. I've been here too long. It's my turn!"

The nurse looked as though she was biting back a smile. "That woman, as you call her, has already had three babies. It just can't be helped. Three babies later, that will be you."

"I don't care about three babies later," Jenn muttered obstinately. "I care about now." But there was nothing to be done for it, so she exhaled- loudly- and fell back against the pillows, restless.

Orlando sighed, frowning at the puzzle Josh had brought him. Under normal circumstances, he would not have tolerated puzzles. Orli hated puzzles. But they'd been there for nearly six hours, and he needed something to do. His mind was literally buzzing. Orlando had never understood how a mind could be buzzing, but he could have sworn there were some very excitable bees trapped in his head. He tried glaring at the puzzle, but no luck. It was supposedly going to be a nice picturesque lighthouse, but so far it looked to Orli like five hundred very small pieces of cardboard.

Josh, sitting next to him, looked as though he were reading The Da Vinci Code, but his eyes were not moving across the print; in fact they were fixed on Orli. Josh's eyes danced with suppressed mirth. Orli, glancing up, noticed. "What?" he snapped irritably. It was why he didn't like puzzles that were more than perhaps fifty pieces. They just made him crabby.

Josh laughed out loud, loudly enough for Michelle, who had returned from her supposed trip to the restroom long ago and had evaded their questions about where she'd been ("The line was long." "But Michelle, you didn't even look." "I could tell") and was happily bouncing in her seat to the rhythm of whatever she was listening to in the portable CD player, either not noticing or altogether disregarding the stares she was attracting, to glance up and stop the CD player long enough to ask, "Is there a problem?"

Josh, for answer, pointed at Orli's puzzle, or rather, the pieces of it.

"So what?" Michelle asked, apparently confused. "Some people have a hard time with these things." She reached over, picked up a piece, studied it for a moment, and after no more than perhaps three rounds of trial and error, neatly snapped it to an appropriate piece. Placing it back on the table, she said, in a tone that was somehow both mocking and soothing, "There you go. Only four hundred ninety-nine pieces now." Orli just stared with his mouth open, but Michelle had already turned on the CD player again and appeared to have forgotten about Orlando and the puzzle entirely. Josh, noticing, shook his head amusedly. Occasionally someone would comment to him about his wife's infamously short attention span, and his response was always, "What attention span?"

Orli sighed, exasperated, and began to put the puzzle back in the box. Michelle raised her eyebrows, looking offended, but obviously couldn't be troubled to stop her music again to say anything.

Jennifer groaned, both from a fresh contraction and out of sheer boredom. "Can't we get someone in here to keep me company?" she asked a fourth nurse, having received a flat "no" from three nurses in a row and hoping yet again that this one would say something different. But no such luck.

"No," the nurse answered distractedly as she rushed past. "It's a maternity ward, not a visitor's ward."

"What the hell is the point of having to wait for ten hours if you can't have company?" Jenn asked snappishly, but the nurse had already passed. It was just as well; if Jenn had had to endure hearing "You're about to give birth! It will all be worth it later!" one more time, she felt she might implode, although she wasn't sure how exactly she would accomplish this. It just sounded very impressive, and she decided she would announce it to the next nurse who told her "no."

"Could I maybe…" she began as the next nurse passed, already laying out her implosion speech.

"Whatever it is, no," the nurse snapped, obviously quite bad-tempered herself. "It's bad enough they've actually allowed a visitor in here."

"Well, too bad it's not my visitor," Jenn returned huffily.

"I'm not?" a voice questioned, sounding hurt.

Jenn turned her head to find the owner of the voice, standing over her hospital bed and looking amused.

"I cannot believe you just yelled at that poor woman," he said. "She's having a hard time right now. Just had to deliver a baby herself. Her first ever. She's barely qualified, poor thing," he added conversationally.

"Orli." It was the only word Jennifer could manage. Summoning up her energy, she continued, "How did you get them to let you in? Every time I asked for a visitor I got yelled at."

Orli's eyes twinkled. "I'm special."

"And I'm not?"

"Did you hear me say that?"

"I believe there was a clear implication."

"You are special."

"When do I get out of here?" she half-wailed, shifting restlessly.

But at that precise moment, a nurse swept over, performed a quick examination, and announced briskly to a standby nurse, "She's ready to be taken to a delivery room now."

"YES," Jenn yelled, in both relief and disbelief. It felt a little extreme to her, however, that she had to be wheeled out of the room on her bed. As when she and Michelle had been in the wreck, nobody seemed to believe that she was capable of walking and in fact very much wanted to use her legs again. She resisted the powerful urge to complain, since she finally felt as though she were getting somewhere, accomplishing something.

"Just keep breathing," the doctor urged. Jenn glared. The doctor was a pretty young woman; Jenn estimated her to be in her mid-thirties. She had a friendly look, but at the moment Jennifer was trying too hard to breathe to really care.

"I am breathing," she responded irritably. "Like I'm going to stop breathing."

"You can never be sure of the side effects for each individual patient," the doctor answered professionally, but Jenn could have sworn she was fighting off a smile. She turned to her husband, wanting sanity.

"Hey, Orli," she said in between gasping breaths. "We never had a baby shower, and this whole Lamaze theory doesn't seem to be working out for me."

"Are those two thoughts even related?" he wondered aloud, and Jennifer groaned, her hopes of finding comfort from her husband dashed. She fell silent, and consequently noticed the footsteps outside the door, and a familiar voice raised in indignation.

"I can't see us just sitting here while Orli runs off to be with Jenn," Josh commented, annoyed. "He could have thought this whole thing through a little better. What's the point of being here if we can't be there for Jennifer?"

Michelle glanced up from The Da Vinci Code, which Josh had given up on a long time ago. Michelle was a devout Christian, Catholic in fact, and though the entire book was a blatant attack on Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular, she found it endlessly fascinating. "Josh, you just want to feel special. Orli is Jenn's husband. When I have a baby, I think I'd rather you there than him, if there could only be one person."

"What do you mean, when?" Josh asked suspiciously. "The doctors at the fertility clinic…"

Michelle sighed, folded over her page, closed the book and adjusted herself in her chair so that her legs curled under her. "I never got a chance to tell you. I just found out the other day myself, and in all the excitement over Jennifer, I didn't feel like it was the right time to bring it up."

"Are you…" Josh's voice trailed off in apparent disbelief.

Michelle blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. "Yes. Actually, I just went over to the pregnancy ward before to have it officially confirmed. Lucky coincidence I had an appointment at almost the same time Orli called us- except that I don't believe in coincidence." Her green eyes were level, not betraying her eagerness and excitement. Josh supposed she felt it was more appropriate to focus on Jennifer's day, but he couldn't help feeling like jumping up and shouting. Years of acting saved him from making a fool of himself right there in the small waiting room. "Really?" he managed to say.

Michelle smiled suddenly. Josh had always marveled at how her smiles so utterly altered her face. When Michelle smiled, every fiber of her being seemed to light up with a special kind of almost tangible joy that never failed to make Josh want to reach out and hold her, so her happiness could rub off on him. "Really," she confirmed, eyes sparkling.

Josh pulled her close. "This has been a hell of a day," he murmured to himself, a massive understatement. For a few blessed moments neither of them spoke, simply absorbing this new reality. Then Josh jumped up suddenly.

"I still want to be there," he declared, and Michelle knew what he was talking about, and knew him well enough not to argue, so she stood up in quiet resignation and gathered what she called their "playtime materials" from the table in front of her. She straightened and followed Josh down the hall Orli had disappeared down a few minutes before.

"What do you mean you can't let us in? Do you know who I am?" Josh yelled.

The nurse outside the delivery room that housed Jenn and Orli was unimpressed. "Family members are allowed in. Are you family?"

Michelle cut in. "Godparents."

The nurse was skeptical. "Yeah? Are you blood relatives?"

Michelle hesitated. "Not exactly." Josh swore silently. If Michelle had one flaw, even in his eyes, it was that she was honest to a fault.

The nurse rolled her eyes and started to move away. Josh waited until she was gone, then pulled on the door handle. To his surprise, he came face-to-face with Orli, who apparently had come to let them in. "Hi," Josh said lamely, suddenly embarrassed about his encounter with the nurse. Orli, however, merely looked amused and waved them inside.

Jennifer looked up. "Oh, no. We do not need everyone here to witness this! Come see the babies when they're outside of me."

Michelle did not look surprised, and turned to leave. "No," Jenn said. "You can stay. You're a girl, right? Yeah, you can stay."

Michelle looked more alarmed than reassured.

For the purpose of sanity, and to write more about the things about which I am knowledgeable, rather than those things of which I can only guess at, we will say little of the birthing process, save that it occurred. Fast-forward perhaps half an hour.

After nine months of pregnancy, nine months of morning sickness and odd cravings for pickles and ice cream at the same time, nine months of weight gain and pain and the desperate thought that she would no longer be a size six, Jennifer could not believe this moment had finally come. She looked down into two little red faces, quiet now after fifteen minutes of endless crying, quiet now that Jennifer had fed them. One nestled in the crook of her left arm, one in her right. A girl and a boy. Allyson Michelle and Nicholas Joshua. Ally and Nick, she would call them. Middle names given for obvious reasons. Both had inquisitive blue eyes that would probably, considering their parents, turn hazel or brown in a few years. Both of them had wisps of dark brown hair, like their father. But when they smiled… that was Jennifer's smile, all the way. They smiled, and she smiled back.

Orli had already held his babies and exclaimed over them, and he and Josh had courteously left when the nurse taught Jennifer how to breast-feed. They crept quietly back in, unnoticed, as Michelle lifted Allyson out of Jenn's arms and cradled her in her own.

"Hey, you know," Josh said quietly to Orlando, not wanting to interrupt the girls' moment, "Michelle just told me she's pregnant too."

"Yeah?" Orli asked, but he wasn't surprised. "She'll be a great mother."

"Yeah," Josh agreed. "Jenn's going to be wonderful, I can already tell."

They stood a few feet back and watched their two beautiful girls holding Jennifer's newborn babies, both smiling and unaware that they were being observed. A warm, happy glow started in Orli's heart and diffused throughout his entire body. On a very un-manly impulse, Josh stepped over and draped an arm around Orlando's shoulder. "We are two very lucky guys," he told him.

"Yeah," Orli smiled. "Yeah. We are."