June 8th 2022

Chapter 159
Our Love of a Sixth

It would seem almost as though the unborn Friar had just been waiting for them to get in the car and start for the hospital. Within a few minutes of their departure, what had up to now felt almost mild, suggesting they'd be at this for a long while, started to ramp up. This might not take a while at all; if anything, Maya started to worry that they might not make it to the hospital. Reasonably, they could maybe stop and consider things, realize the likelihood or unlikelihood of this belief, but with only the two of them there in the car, one of them feeling and reacting and the other driving while trying to assist, reason had nowhere to stand. All Lucas could think in that moment was 'get there fast, get there safe.'

The late hour certainly worked in their favor, providing empty streets in some stretches of the drive from home to the hospital. They could not have asked for a better time as far as a speedy journey went. This was it… this was happening… this would be their baby's birthday. Later on, looking back on this night, from the start of everything at 12:01 to the sudden ramping up of the labor on the way to the hospital, they would start seeing and recognizing this trait in their child, this tendency to surprise them all at once, in a timely fashion. It would lead to a new staple nickname in their household…

Despite shared concerns, the baby was not born in the car. They pulled up to the hospital and went to park. Lucas wanted to drop her off first and then follow, so she wouldn't have to walk across the lot, but then Maya didn't want them to be separated. He was going to be right there by her side, all the way. She could walk. So, once again following her call, Lucas took them to park, hopped out of the car, grabbed the bag, and came to help his wife out of her seat and back toward the hospital.

"This is as close as I could get us," he told her as he helped her along.

"I know, I know, this is good, don't worry, I can make it," Maya breathed, even as her steps came in conflict with everything she was feeling in her body. "Just don't let me sit down out here, okay? Last time, I did that, it was in the bathroom, and I got stuck there."

"Got it," he promised, and they both shared a quiet laugh, recalling the night Marianne was born.

"I know this is like… our most… standard delivery, and we've never done it like this before, but I still don't get why we're being so weird and nervous about it…"

"What, us? No, we're completely calm," he assured her, and it made her laugh again.

"Are you trying to distract me so that we keep walking?"

"I don't know, is it working?" Lucas asked.

"Little bit, yeah," Maya admitted, before stalling under the quake of her legs. She was never in danger of falling, not while he held her. "Maybe keep talking…"

Thankfully, there was a woman standing a short distance from the entrance, a nurse on her break, as they learned, and as she spotted the two of them approaching, she went and got hold of a wheelchair before coming out to meet them. With great thanks, Lucas helped Maya into the seat before hurrying her along into the hospital and off to where they needed to be. Unlike their last hospital birth, with the triplets, where they had time to come along, and get prepared without so much haste, this one moved a lot faster. There was no settling in, or waiting around… It didn't all happen in an instant as soon as they'd arrived, but the run up to 'the big moment' all happened like a sprint, eye on the prize… It wasn't until after the baby was born that they got to stop and let themselves take everything in… once the spinning had wound down to a standstill.

Lucas was right where she wanted and needed him to be, right where he wanted and needed to be, one arm around her shoulders, one hand getting squeezed for all it was worth by hers, giving her encouragements she may or may not have been able to hear over her own cries. As with Marianne, as with the triplets, Lucas would find his attention split, in equal measures given to Maya and with the progress of the delivery. The head was coming, then it was out, there was a shoulder, there was another… Lucas would recall hearing the baby's first cries and describe them as sounding as though they'd just needed to come out, and they'd been let out as though to say 'ah, finally, fresh air…' Even as the tension had released with the baby, Maya's eyes went seeking as soon as she heard the shrill cries, and she saw just as Lucas did when the babe was brought forth and set down on her, crying and trembling.

They were both so instantly taken with the presence, making first contact with their new child, that it took a moment for them to hear what Maya had discreetly known and what Lucas had yet to learn… They had themselves another girl. No, not just 'another' girl. They had been blessed with a brand new daughter, and here she was… Mackenzie Abigail Friar was born at 1:37 on the morning of April 24th 2035.

"You are determined, huh? You are determined, Miss Tiny…" Maya laughed through happy tears. "This was your due date, and you weren't going to keep waiting, is that it?" She'd calmed down some, and now that she wasn't crying so much, the newborn just looked at peace, there with her mother holding her, and her father's hand on her as well…

Lucas hadn't stopped smiling since she'd arrived. Maya may have been very much on the loopy side at this point, tired both from the day she'd never really gotten to rest from and the hasty delivery, but she didn't miss a second of it. New Dad Lucas was another favorite of hers along with Expecting Dad Lucas, and just plain Dad Lucas… Girl Dad Lucas had a new member to his team.

They had both worried, even if they'd both done their best not to keep thinking about it that way, after what had happened back in February, but now here was their girl, and as they checked her out, and cleaned her up, and brought her back, with Maya now helped to settle into a proper room… Oh, she was as perfect as could be.

"I really don't want to let her go right now, but…" Maya managed to look away from her, so she might pass the bundle into Lucas' arms. "To be clear, I'm not just doing this because I'm this close to falling asleep… But I am, so if I do…"

"You just go ahead," Lucas assured her with a nod as he took the baby. "I've got her."

"Yeah, you do," Maya replied with a sleepy smile. She might have fallen asleep within three seconds of letting her arms back down.

Stepping quietly away from the bed, Lucas had eyes only for his new daughter. It was hard not to consider this moment in comparison with the last time. The triplets had been much smaller, as was to be expected, but it was still hard not to notice it. Mackenzie had not been born early like her big sisters. She was their biggest newborn, just barely more than Marianne, really just where they'd want her to be. In his head though, and maybe in his hands, too, he still remembered how small Lucy, Kacey, and Remy had been by comparison, so it was almost as though Mackenzie had to be older, not just less than an hour old. But she was, and she was here, in his arms, and he loved her so much already… Every once in a while, she would start to fuss, and all it would take would be for him to speak to her, holding her up close, and she would calm down again, like she recognized the sound of his voice, and it reassured her. Maybe that was it, maybe it wasn't, but he chose to believe that it was, that all their conversations had made it so that she knew him, in some shape or form. He was her father…

"I have a confession to make…"

Lucas looked up at the sound of the quiet, sleepy voice. Maya was awake, two hours after she'd dozed off, clearly still in need of much sleep but also inevitably aware of their daughter's needs.

"Okay," he smiled as he brought her back over, passed her into her mother's arms. Maya forgot everything in that moment except the existence of this little body in her arms, that little face blinking up at her. Finally, she remembered what she was about to say and turned a lazy but sheepish smile to her husband. He understood what it meant. "You knew, didn't you?" he chuckled, and she nodded.

"I didn't mean to, you know? But then when I came here in February, they couldn't know we didn't know, so the woman who did the scan looked at it and said it without thinking. 'There, see, she's doing just fine,'" Maya recalled the words. The memory made her smile as she looked to the baby again. And she is… "I didn't want to tell you, didn't want to spoil the surprise for both of us."

"I get it," he promised.

"But you know what?" Maya added, recalling the other detail. "Her name was Mackenzie, too. Not sure if it was her first or last name anymore, but I saw it on her ID and I thought… Well, there it is," she laughed lightly. Oh, she could just live off of this happy buzz that surrounded them in the first minutes and hours with their baby girls… As exhausted as she was, as they both were, everything felt light.

There had been no underlying inspiration with this one. They had gone into this naming and, since they hadn't known whether they'd have a boy or a girl this time, it had felt right to just look into the multitude of possible names in the world and try to find something that would sound right to them both, something they'd know instantly would belong to their child. That was what Mackenzie had felt like to them as soon as it had entered the list. Had they had a boy, they had been set on Alexander.

Now when it came to the middle name, it did feel like they wanted that one to have some meaning, as all their girls' names had done. It had been easy for them to decide on those. If they'd had a boy, it would have been Lucas, following the pattern of his father, grandfather, and great grandfather having their middle names being that of their father's, and for a girl… Marianne had been named for her father's maternal grandmother, and the triplets had as their middle names those of their father's paternal grandmother and their mother's two grandmothers. Those four women had all been so important in Lucas and Maya's lives, for how little or much time they got to spend with them, only Angela Clutterbucket remaining to them now.

But Maya's family tree, as bare as it had once felt to her, had gone and grown so many branches over the years, and in keeping with how her previous daughters had been named, the answer was clear. Mackenzie Friar had three grandmothers, and in her middle name they would honor the third. How fortunate were they that she'd stuck around, that they'd been able to make it so that she would get to meet this new granddaughter in just a few hours, when she came along with the eager new big sisters…

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners