A/N Hey everybody, hope your weekend was fabulous! Right, onto business: this is the penultimate chapter...but panic not because I do have a sequel planned! Ok, now for the slightly less thrilling news: obviously being only sixteen I have no previous experience of being pregnant and/or giving birth (thank god) so these next two chapters are a little crappy - not because I haven't tried, you should see the amount of research I have done, much to the dismay of my mum who may actually think I'm pregnant after she saw me looking up pregnancy tips on the internet! But yeah, for all of you reading this who have actually given birth all I can do is apologise, there are so many conflicting views about labour and such on the internet (is it awful, is it not) and I couldn't really decide which way I wanted to right it, so I sort of combined the two. I did think I'd found a way of getting around actually writing about the birth, but that didn't really work. Damn. Guess this fic was slightly ambitious. So yeah, read it, review it and give me your thoughts. I love you all greatly! [This chapter was reuploaded on May 24th 2010 due to formatting errors]
"I thought I'd lost you. I'm so happy you're OK."
"I'm not going anywhere, Temperance. You can't get rid of me that easily."
Booth was fully awake now, and she was still sitting in the uncomfortable chair she had sat in before, when life seemed so bleak and her whole world was barely being held together. Her small, delicate hand was still clutching his much bigger one, their fingers entwined so that neither could tell which belonged to them. Angela had left a few moments earlier, satisfied that he was fine, to go back to the lab to inform everyone else. So now they were alone in his hospital room, neither of them quite sure what to say to the other. Like before, she had so much she wanted to say but no way of getting the words out so that they even came close to describing how she felt.
He had never been one for big speeches or talking about his feelings, but she always understood him – even when he barely understood it himself. She never judged him for anything he had done before. She never expected him to be something he wasn't.
She would never tell him, but he was everything she could ever want.
Temperance would never have imagined that she could be this happy. It was two months after Booth's accident, just one month before the babies were due, and the two of them were sitting side by side on the sofa watching TV. It was her last night in her house, the one that she had lived in for the past nine years. Tomorrow, they would be sitting on the same sofa, but in the living room of the new house that they had just bought together. It had three bedrooms, a garage and a huge garden – perfect for the twins. They were cutting it a bit fine, moving in so close to her due date (especially as twins almost always came early, anyway) but at least they were actually doing it – even though she felt a bit like she had wasted an entire weekend sorting out the babies' room at her house, when it wouldn't even be used. Suddenly she had a thought.
"What are we going to name the babies?"
"Mork and Mindy." He obviously wasn't interested in this aspect of parenthood, and was more intent on watching the television.
"Seeley, be serious! We should have at least discussed this by now, or even decided on something!"
"OK, you tell me names you like and I'll tell you names that I like."
She thought for a moment. She wanted something original, but nothing weird. Angela had given her many, many suggestions, but none of them were really to her taste – they were all 'trendy' names like Madison and Jackson.
"For a boy, I like Brandon..."
"Wait a second," Booth interrupted, "Don't you think Brandon Brennan sounds a bit strange?"
"I was thinking it should be Brandon Booth."
"Oh. Well I just assumed that you would want them to take your name."
"Children normally take the father's surname." Angela was still determined that they would eventually get married, so said letting the children take his name was a good idea. 'So when you're married the whole family has the same surname,' she had said. But things were starting to get awkward, so Temperance decided to change the subject. "I like Beatrice for a girl."
"Hmm...Little Bea. I like it."
"What are your names?"
"For a boy, Alexander. For a girl, I think Christine would be sweet. It would be nice to name a girl after your mother, don't you think?"
She didn't know what to say, but he seemed to have that affect on her a lot recently. This was the best name he could have ever suggested, and just the fact that he did suggest it made her want to cry. She missed her mother so much all the time, but she missed her so much more now that she could really use her advice, now that Temperance should be preparing her for her first grandchildren.
"That box goes upstairs, in the biggest bedroom."
At last they were finally moving into their new house, and beginning to feel like a real family. Almost all of the big pieces of furniture had been taken off the truck and into the correct room, and now the removal men (which basically meant Hodgins, Zack, and a couple of Booth's friends) were taking boxes containing china, clothes, and other household items inside.
Temperance was on the front lawn of twenty-one Meadowlake Street , directing everyone on where things went. As Zack was bringing out dining room chairs about half an hour ago, she had told him to leave one for her to sit on – she was so big now that she could only stand up for about ten minutes without her back beginning to really hurt. Or her feet, and she hadn't seen them for about three months.
"Here you go." Booth had come out of the front door with a glass of lemonade for her.
"I should be getting drinks for you guys, you're doing all the work."
"You're pregnant. If I see you move from that chair, you can sleep outside tonight."
"That's only if you see me, though?"
"Temperance, we don't need any help. Stay there."
If it had been anyone else who had told her to do that, she would have immediately defied them and done her own thing. But she knew Booth was only doing what was best for her – about a month ago she had been informed she had high blood pressure. She was well known for being fiercely independent, although for some reason she liked the idea of relying on him, and trusting him to make a decision.
Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her abdomen, and a trickle of water down her leg.
"Are you OK?" Booth had rushed back over from where he had began to take more boxes off the truck when he heard her cry out in pain.
"I think my waters just broke."
"Shall I phone an ambulance?"
"No, the book says it takes a while for labour to get established." She appeared calm, but inside she was screaming. She wasn't ready, and even though she had read that damned baby book about ten times she still wasn't as prepared as she thought she should be. Another jolt of pain struck her body, and she had to fight to stay on her chair. It felt like a really strong period pain, only worse and like her insides were falling out.
"I'm calling the hospital," Booth said, taking his phone from his pocket. After requesting an ambulance and giving their address, he informed the operator that Temperance was having twins and that her due date wasn't for another month.
The bag she had packed a few weeks ago for when she went into labour was somewhere on the removal truck, she didn't think it had been taken off yet. If she was prepared like she should be, she should have put it in the car so she would have it to hand if this happened. She was going to be the worst mother imaginable, she just knew it. Her contractions were pretty close together, now and lasting what seemed like forever. The ambulance also seemed to be taking forever, and she really didn't want to give birth on the front lawn.
"OK, Miss Brennan, just relax. I'm nurse Beth and I'm going to be looking after you until you're settled in."
She was a women about ten year older than Temperance, with tightly curled black hair flecked with grey. Her face however looked like it had never seen a worry in it's life, and was just marked with deep laughter lines around her eyes and mouth. She was pushing the wheelchair that Temperance was sat in through the maternity unit until they came to an empty bed near the end of the ward.
"Now then," she continued, "You have nothing to be alarmed about, premature births in multiples are quite common because the uterus tends to get overstretched. Some women are also prone to cervix weakness, although that's more likely to happen to a woman who's given birth to more than one child already – this is you're first, right?"
"Yes." she replied weakly, feeling sick with worry that her babies weren't ready to be born. Like this was her fault, and that she hadn't protected them enough.
"Well we're going to have bundles of fun. You don't need to panic, you're in good hands – this will be my thirtieth twin birth. I think you should try pushing vaginally before we talk about a caesarian section, you could probably handle it. You're further along than a lot of the women who come in having twins."
"Is it going to hurt?" Of course, she already knew the answer, but she almost hoped that in the past five minutes the doctors had come up with a magical way of making labour pain free.
"Well, I'm not gonna lie, it's no picnic. We can give you an epidural if you'd like?"
"Yes please."
Once she was settled in the bed, dressed in a hospital gown, she was examined to see how dilated she was, given an epidural to take away the pain, and her stomach was felt to determine what position the babies were lying in. Then the curtain around her bed was drawn back, and she was greeted by Booth, Angela and the removal men who were all eager to know what was happening.
"Miss Brennan," Nurse Beth began, "The twin on the right-hand side of your uterus is in a breech position. That means we can try giving birth naturally to the left twin and then the right one could turn, or we may have to do an emergency C-section. Your blood pressure is also quite high, so you need to make up your mind quick so we can get them out of there soon."