Chapter 8
A half an hour later Sully woke up to screaming and the wails of a discontented infant. The cries of his wife and daughter confused him as he lay in the state between sleep and wakefulness. A moment later, he woke fully as he heard his wife say, "Help me!" too loudly and urgently for him to remain idle.
"Michaela, what is it?" he exclaimed worriedly, picking his crying daughter up from the ground where she lay beside her mother and attempting to calm her.
"Sully, I…I…I…think that…AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Is it the afterbirth?" he asked with so much tension in his voice that the words barely came out as a squeak.
"No…no, it's not the afterbirth," she panted. "It's…AWWWWWWWWWW!"
"Michaela, tell me what's wrong," he entreated over the wails of his agitated daughter.
"I…I…I think…I have to…to…PUSH!" she screamed.
"What!" Sully asked.
"Sully, look to see how far I've dilated," she instructed between screams, forgetting for a moment that Sully wasn't a doctor and wouldn't know what that word meant.
"Dilated?" he questioned fully of anxiety.
"How wide the opening of the birth canal is. Tell me if you can see the baby's head."
He did as she asked, but not before repeating questioningly, "the baby's head?" At that moment he saw it, another baby's head making its way out of the birth canal. It was almost crowning and Sully was too shocked to move.
"Sully," she screamed, "you have to catch it, put the baby down and catch the other." He set his daughter down and prepared to deliver his sixth child.
"PUSH, Michaela. Push as hard as you can!" he instructed intensely.
"I'm too tired Sully, I can't. Help me!" she whimpered before screaming as another contraction hit.
"I'm right here, just PUSH! It's going to be okay. The head's almost out," he told her excitedly.
"AHHHHHHHHHH!" Michaela yelled as she bore down on the contraction as hard as she could, hoping and praying that this birth would soon be over.
"That's it. Breathe. Just rest for a minute and then give me one big push," he encouraged his wife as he watched her body contort in agony and her face turn red from lack of oxygen. "Breathe."
Michaela inhaled deeply and held her breath, gathering her strengths to deliver another son or daughter. She found, however, that she needed her husband's strength and will to get her body through this unexpected labor. She reached out for him and he squeezed her hand comfortingly, but too quickly. This gesture brought no peace to Michaela and as their son was delivered. She screamed her husband's name as though he was miles from her plight.
Soon after their son's cord had been cut and both placentas were delivered, the whole family lay down to sleep. After their son's birth Sully had yet again tried to tell Michaela that he loved her, and this time she had violently shrugged off his caresses and words of endearment. This caused Sully immeasurable hurt and made both parents realize that the births of their son and daughter had only confused their emotions further and deepened the uncertainty between them.
Michaela leaned against Sully as she nursed her son, all the while caressing the baby's soft hair with the hand that was not supporting him as he lay on her lap, nearly asleep. Her daughter lay on the ground beside her, her little hands hitting her mother knee absent-minding as she explored the outside world for the first time.
The babies had woken up only minutes before squalling with hunger and for the touch of their mother and her protection from the cold early morning air, but she had been awake for sometime before that trying to make sense of the cascading emotions which threatened to overwhelm her much as someone literally is overwhelmed by the cascading flow of the greatest waterfall. Having Sully this close to her made her wonder whether she could ever stand to be apart from him again and yet she couldn't trust his proclamation of love, as they had been expressed to her during a moment in which even the most cold-hearted of beings would lie to ease the pain of childbirth. This meant that she had to keep her distance from Sully, even as he held her close and continued to anticipate her ever need and desire, as well as those of their newest children.
She hadn't wanted Sully to sit behind her while she nursed. It was too intimate a gesture for him to make if he didn't love her, but she had let him support her, partly because it was a practical solution to the problem of not having anything to balance against and partly because she still reveled in his touch and worried that the moment she told him to stop being so attentive, he would snap out of the trance he was in and remember how little he cared for her, that he truly didn't love her and that then he would walk out for good. Of course, she was sure that he would visit the older children and would ask for a place in the lives of Katie and the twins, but she was almost certain that in his heart of hearts, she really didn't matter anymore to him now than a simple acquaintance would. She knew that in order to keep strong for the children, she would have to remain stoic and distant from Sully and could never let him know how much she truly loved him, even if denying it to him and to herself broke her heart every day for the rest of her life.
Please review and let me know if the storyline and characters are behaving in interesting and yet valid ways consistant with the character and development of the story and show.
Thanks, Corinna
