September 17th 2022
Chapter 260
Our Hope For Home
Maya could not honestly say whether she was happiest to be going home or to be leaving the hospital. She was as understanding as she was appreciative of the fact that her doctor wanted to be absolutely certain that she was alright to leave, but truly, by the end of her stay, she was going stir crazy. She needed to get out of there, to be home, with Lucas, and the girls, and her sisters, and the dogs... As far as she was concerned, she would make a far greater recovery once she was there. And now, at long last, she would be. She was going home.
The first time that it actually felt real was when they started clearing up her room. Some of the flowers had wilted away, and she was not frankly looking to conserve any of them, so those were thrown away, while the others were ferried back home. The same went for the balloons. The only one Maya truly wanted to keep was the one that Marianne had brought her, the one she'd seen upon waking, just as Lucas had hoped she would. She may have adopted the plush little lamb as a sleeping companion since then, a proxy for its giver, for all those she could not be with on the nights she remained at the hospital. They had all held it at one time or another; it smelled like them, like home.
"I like this one a lot," Marianne presented her mother with the drawing she'd just pulled from the wall. Ella was helping her. She was only taking the ones too high for her little sister to reach for the time being, leaving the others for Marianne to carefully peel down before removing the bits of tape with equal care. It was a lengthy process, but one she happily saw to.
"Yeah, I've seen you looking at it," Maya smiled. "Should we add it to your pile?" Every time she offered to put one of the drawings aside for her to keep, to possibly put on display in her room, Marianne would have a similar reaction of surprise. Could she really? Now she had a small pile set aside, to be placed at the top of the box when they were all done. It had been left by the students, thinking ahead.
When at last every last offering of any kind had been either packed, taken away, or thrown away, what remained were Maya's own belongings. There hadn't been very many of those in the time when she'd been unconscious, but once she'd woken up and still been made to stay, Ella had gone back to the house with Taylor and brought back what her mother needed.
"You know, I was this close to going home in PJs," Maya told Lucas as she finished getting dressed. Her hand still was drawn to rest at her belly - what was left of it - as it tended to do. The habit would retreat in time.
"You could have," he argued. He'd just finished getting Aubrey into the car seat, which was made infinitely easier by the girl being asleep.
"Yeah, but this kind of feels good, too," she admitted.
When he looked over at her, he smiled, he did, but there was still The Memory, stuck there at the back of his gaze... sometimes not entirely in the back even. He still couldn't help it, could he? He still looked at her and remembered those endless hours where she'd been unconscious... recuperating, yes, but as far as any of them knew, too, potentially dying.
She had no awareness of any of it, not now, and likely not ever. It was as she'd said, countless times now. She only barely remembered the moment Aubrey was born. She was sure she remembered lying in that bed, gripping Lucas' hand, and then... And then she was still gripping his hand, except everything was quiet. She opened her eyes, saw a colorful balloon very lightly swaying, its string around a plush lamb. She saw Lucas, kneeling by her bed, asleep, his head leaning on his arm... There were dark circles under his eyes and the sheen of tears on his face.
She'd been afraid, hardly ever confused regarding her situation, just afraid, because she could tell that the baby was no longer inside her, and she was taken with the terrible thought that something could have happened to her. But then she could just see, behind him... and there was the bracelet on his wrist, and on hers, that would connect them to their daughter... Then Lucas had woken up, so relieved, and she'd met Aubrey, and then the rest was history.
She was curious about those unconscious times. How could she not be? There was no part of her that had been even mildly conscious, and if she'd dreamed, she recalled none of it. There were just nearly two days that she'd lost, her baby girl's first, while everyone she cared for out there worried for her, lost sleep over her, cried for her. She only wished she could erase any and all memory they had of the incident, but it was impossible. They would carry it with them forever. It wouldn't bother them so much after a while, would fall deeper into their minds with time, but it would be there for them to suddenly remember at the slightest provocation.
"Hey..." Lucas walked up to her. He could read her worry over his worry pretty well, too. He embraced her, and she did the same with him. "Let's go home," he smiled, and she nodded. Yes, it was about time.
After a delay of days, they experienced yet another echo of their Mackenzie-Aubrey back to back pregnancies: the ride home. They still remembered very well going home with Mackenzie, five-year-old Marianne, and the twenty-month-old triplets. It had been easier than anticipated but definitely a new experience. Now, one year and one more baby later, it was that, too. Now, it was a six-year-old, three girls less than three months shy of their third birthday, and a thirteen-month-old, along with their days-old sister.
The triplets had become better at minding quiet time. It wasn't a hundred percent success rate, but their odds were generally better. Where car rides went, that was where a lot of their percentage was lost. They could see so much, hear so much, smell so much... Their curiosity knew no bounds. They were told that they needed to be quiet because of the baby, right as they were bringing her along, and they'd all nodded dutifully. They had just been through this not too long ago with Mackenzie; they remembered. Now it was only a matter of their not getting so distracted.
As for Mackenzie, oh, well... Their funny girl was a whole other matter, but she had big sister Annie there to keep her occupied, and that would just have to be their solution. It might work, and it might not.
They were undone by a leaf. It flew in through the window, was presumed erroneously by Remy to be 'a bug, a bug!' and then there had been a lot of high pitched little girl voices in the minivan, cut through with cries out of the youngest two.
"My fault, I jinxed us," Maya decided once the culprit had been caught, identified, and displayed for proof.
The best thing that came out of their finally getting back on the road - as Lucas had pulled over - was to see how Lucy reached over from her seat and got hold of Aubrey's hand, reminding her parents of how she'd take Remy's hand when they dared to put the triplets in a stroller. The baby did not cry for a moment, the rest of the way home, while Lucy kept holding her hand and smiling like the proud big sister she was. Already, she seemed to have reached the conclusion that, at long last, she'd been granted a buddy. Kacey and Remy, even if they were also united with her as triplets, were a natural pair, and then from the start, Marianne and Mackenzie had been bonded. This was her baby, her buddy, she'd decided it.
Finally, they were home. Ella had wanted to be there for this moment, but she'd had to go back to Houston, back to class. Her parents could already expect her to spend as much time as possible back in Austin for a little while, as long as it took before her semester was over, after which she planned to spend the entire summer with the family. Her parents might try to convince her to relax, to go places and have fun, but she would do what she felt she had to do, and they could ask for no more. Who would they be to refuse some quality time with their daughter and granddaughter?
Taylor had flown back to Indiana the day before. Cara and her husband and son were still around for a couple more days before they'd return to New York. It had been a very unexpected bonus in all this - and they would be glad for those as they came - that they'd gotten to see little Felix in the flesh, to see how he had been growing since being in New York. Depending on how things went as they headed into summer, the hope was that the Arroyos would be back for good before long.
"Dada, Aubrey has to see her bed," Lucy told her father as he carried the seat into the house.
"Right now?" Lucas asked with a smile. It wasn't that their littlest triplet was a pushover, but she'd never been all that assertive either. She was easily overwhelmed, so she would cling to those who made her feel safe. But now, the way she stepped up... It was something new, and he was curious to see where it would lead. "Alright, let's go show her then. Everyone coming?" he looked around to the others, who'd still been coming in when Lucy made her request.
Kacey and Remy squeaked, following after their triplet as she started up the stairs. Marianne went and guided Mackenzie so she might climb safely to the first floor.
"You good?" Lucas looked to Maya as she made her way up along with them.
"If I say no, will you carry me?" she asked. He shrugged, nodded. "A tempting offer, but I think I can pull it off on my own."
She went and he followed with the baby, all of them too aware of recent events to go all that fast. Going by the audience they soon had, waiting at the top, they were slow. When they were nearly there though the girls went scurrying up the hall and into their parents' room. If they knew how happy it made their mother and father to see them all together like that, the Friar pack working together, playing together...
The crib had been set up and waiting for the baby, in their whole nursery corner. But, as Maya discovered, in the time she'd been away, there had been some additions made to the décor. One of them was a piece of art not unlike the one done for Mackenzie by her students, this time showing that this was Aubrey's corner. The other big one was the new mobile hanging over the crib. It had been a cooperative project, with Dora carving the wooden figures and Stella, Nika, Ash, and Bodhi each painting a couple of them. Birds... Nightingale and owl, two swans, three kingfishers, a canary, and at their heart, a second nightingale, for Aubrey Juliet Friar. They had planned to give it to her parents the day she was born, but then...
"It's pretty, huh," Remy commented.
"Very pretty," Maya agreed, laughing, and trying not to cry.
"Dada," Lucy tapped his leg, and Lucas got the message. Aubrey was taken from her seat, asleep, and she was laid down in her crib, guarded by her birds overhead. They looked just like the ones on her parents' arms. And now she was home.
"Good?" Lucas asked, looking down to the little blonde now peering through the bars. Lucy nodded. Yes, this was just what she'd been looking forward to.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
