Beca was convinced that since she was carrying four babies at once that her morning sickness was quadruple the times worse. She had felt slight sickness before they knew that they were having quads, but nothing to the extent that she was now. She laid in bed for most of the morning, mixing songs and soundtracks for the club that she worked at, at least when she wasn't throwing up or feeling some sort of nausea.
She and Jesse had wanted to open up their own rec center eventually, years into their marriage when the kids were older, but a wrench was thrown into their plans as God laughed, their dreams becoming just that. But they were perfectly content where they were now, not that they could have ever imagined this many kids, at least not at once.
Beca and Jesse, (mostly Jesse because Beca was still a partial brick wall when it came to emotions) would talk about their fears and also what they were looking forward to, but mostly, they felt hesitance to be excited. They wanted to shout the news from the rooftops but at the same time they wanted to bury their feelings down inside in fear of knowing everything could change in an instance.
They started out slow, telling Chloe, her dad and Sheila, and Jesse's parents first, deciding to wait until she started showing more to announce it to everyone else because she knew waiting until she was out of the first trimester would be too long. Her tiny frame could in no way hide the blooming secret of her four babies, and if something did go south she wanted the support of her closest friends and family around her and Jesse.
But clearly her sadness, worry, fear and sickness began to get to her because Aubrey and Chloe, along with Fat Amy and a few of the other Bella's came over, insisting on giving Beca a girls night she wouldn't soon forget.
After hesitantly dancing with her girls, and stopping to sit for drinks, Beca nervously glanced at Chloe, knowing that there wasn't much she could do to avoid this. Beca was an avid beer drinker and declining a beer would be a huge red flag. So she nuzzled her face into Chloe's shoulder, feeling the room spin and her anxiety over flow, waiting for the moments the waiter or bartender would ask them for an order.
"I'll have just a water, please." Beca informs him, reaching for a glass as the waiter slides in towards her.
"Beca doesn't wanna get blackout drunk tonight?" Aubrey teases her.
"More like, 'White Girl Wasted'." Cynthia Rose chimes in.
"Girls," Chloe holds warning in her voice for them to knock it off as Beca sips her water gingerly. "Maybe we should do some karaoke?" She merely suggests, but her tone says "Get lost".
Chloe rubs Beca's back before standing up and making her way over to the mic, requesting her go-to karaoke song before taking her place on the stage.
"Oh no," Beca buries her head in her hands, cringing inside while also laughing at the giggly ginger, and she knew now was the time to cut her off.
"Gangsta's Paradise." She spits out all too confidently, the sound of liquor heavy on her lips and voice.
Chloe's arms bounced with the beats as if she was spinning rap records, and she walked around the stage like she was a rap God, though her friends knew this was all the giggle juice talking. Chloe didn't need much to get crazy, and they wouldn't describe her as drunk. She was just light weight and could barely handle the three "Juices. None of the girls had come to get drunk, just to have fun and let loose, the days of drinking and club far behind them, but they still wanted to get out like they used to before everything started changing.
"Make this stop, someone." Beca groans, growing weary from laughing too hard.
Beca stepped on stage and threw Chloe's arm around her waist, helping her down and away from further embarrassment, not that she'd remember this tomorrow, but instead would become violently ill. But as it turned out the next day, it wouldn't be the liquor, Chloe had no intention of drinking that much, but instead her daring and carefree personality that took over the night before, with still a little help from her "Jiggle juice".
"Okay, okay." Beca finally interrupts as they settle down back at their tables, getting ready to grab their coats and leave. "Chloe already knows this, but there's something I want to tell you all."
She bites her tongue, trying to hold back the enormous smile that was forming on her face, the excitement bubbling up through her, and she could literally see Chloe struggling much the same.
"Forget this ridiculous anticipation stuff; I'm going to straight forward tell you that I'm pregnant!" She feels her heart burst as she watches everyone's faces' change from shock to excitement.
As they began to get up to hug her to her dismay, (even though she could let it slide this one time because for Goodness sake, she was pregnant!) she put her hand up to stop them all from coming at her, forgetting one piece of important information.
"Wait! There's more!" She announces, watching as they backed away with anticipation. "There's more than one." She looks around, filtering out all the noise as they chime in their opinions.
"Twins?!" She hears more than one gasp.
Beca hated attention drawn to herself, and even more hated when people prolonged their confessions, but she couldn't help but feel like a tease. She was petrified to tell them because opinions in the group varied, until Fat Amy came out with hers.
"No offense, but it looked like you were carrying like five baby versions of me. But I thought it was just all the wings." She remarks and Beca smiles.
"You're not far off." She hears Chloe mutters.
"It's quads, actually." Beca laughs nervously, a weird word on her own tongue.
Simultaneously the girls squeal, finally group hugging Beca and that's when Beca shakes them off, distancing herself from potential heartbreak. She hated to get the girls so excited when she knew in the back of her mind that things could change with a snap. But she didn't want to live in fear, she wanted to celebrate with the girls, no matter how hard.
"We once had the Korean government after us for my parents having twins. That's why I ate my twin in the womb; To save her." Lily whispers, startling everyone with the dark truth.
"The only reason I have eleven siblings is for child labor. And some of us weren't even good at that." Flo adds.
Aubrey stays straight faced through the entire thing, holding Chloe's hand through it all, and that's when it occurred that she knew Beca didn't know she knew. Aubrey was hiding something and Beca would've died to know, that was if she could only notice Aubrey in the moment.
"Beca," Aubrey tried for her attention, "When are you due?"
"It's hard to say with quads, because they always come early. But I think around early August. Why?"
"Because," She sighs in frustration, "That's when we were supposed to perform for the troops. My dad was coming to watch us." She throws her hands up.
"Aubrey," Chloe warns, "Beca just found out she was pregnant with quads and you're worried about the performance? Shouldn't you be more worried about Beca's health?"
Aubrey realized that it wasn't the best timing, but she had intended to make up for what she thought was a childhood full of disappointments by performing, and she felt that without Beca, they couldn't give a killer performance. She knew it was selfish, she was about to have her miracle babies, and all she could worry about was her father. But there was more, so much more, and she couldn't open up to the other Bella's. So she pinned her lips together and smiled through the next twenty minutes, watching everyone celebrate with Beca.
-XXX-
Beca waddled into the kitchen, yawning and stretching the full span of her arms over her head before sitting at the kitchen counter and having her husband slide before her, her steaming hot coffee, decaf of course because Jesse was paranoid, and dry toast.
"Mornin, my million dollar babies!" Jesse kisses Beca a quick peck before reaching across the counter and putting a finger on Beca's growing stomach.
Beca felt huge and uncomfortable, and Jesse knew that. He wanted to do everything to help her but he couldn't take the babies to carry, so he kept her comfortable the best he could. She laughed at the fact that Jesse didn't want her to lift a finger, and every time he would sing movie songs to the babies, it reminded her what a goofball husband she had.
"Jess, we have an appointment today." She excitedly informs him through a mouthful of toast.
"Is it that day?" He hints.
"It's today." She laughs, messing around with him. "We find out the genders of the babies." She smiles.
Jesse was hopeful for an even mix, so he could use four names from the breakfast club, two boys, and two girls. Beca would find that ridiculous, and she did.
"Jess, don't get your hopes up. This whole "Breakfast Club" thing, it needs to stop."
"Well, I can tell there's definitely no sun in your "Capris Sun" this morning." He sarcastically remarks.
"I just don't want you to be disappointed when we can't name our kids after your favorite movie."
"Our favorite movie." He corrects her.
"We can't name our kids after something that no one else would understand the meaning to." She reminds him, finding this whole argument redundant.
"It doesn't matter if others get it, because it's special to us."
Beca stands and waddles for her coat on the rack, Jesse beating her to it and wrapping it around her body. She then grabs the keys and walks toward the door, expecting Jesse to follow.
"So what are you thinking? Boys, girls, or both?" Jesse asks as he stops at a light, Beca staring contently out the window.
"You know, what if we find out two of the babies, then leave the other set of identical twins a secret? That way we have something to look forward to."
"As fun as that would be, I'd like to have name lined up. Knowing which baby gets which name from our movie."
"Jesse," She sighs, looking over to him. "We have two sets of identical twins, so babies 'A' and 'B' are likely going to be the same gender, but may be opposite from babies 'C' and 'D'. Identical twins aren't usually opposite genders."
"What's your point?" Jesse infers.
"If we have two eggs that both split, that makes them identical and fraternal. Because we implanted two eggs, that make them fraternal and they both split, so the ones that are split from each other are identical." Beca finished, lowkey feeling like a scientist.
Jesse looks at her lost, surprised by her intense knowledge on how this baby splitting thing worked, and just nodded his head. Beca caught on and grabbed his hand, smiling at his reassuringly, but still informing.
"We could have two girls and two boys, or all boys, or all girls. But no matter what happens, we're going to be happy, because God gifted us with this many babies. We can't be disappointed just because you," Beca pauses and points at him, sticking her pointer finger into his shoulder, "Want to name our babies after a ridiculous tradition."
As Beca got undressed and into her gown, she prepared herself for not only making the quads feel like reality by knowing their genders, but also for the tolerance test she had to take later that day, along with a blood draw before work, later that day.
"Morning guys," Dr. Jermaine greets them as she closes the door behind her, "Are we ready to do this." She sets down her clipboard and pulls on blue gloves as Jesse and Beca eagerly nod.
The monitor fills the room with four strong heartbeats and images of squirmy little humans on the screen, Jesse and Beca watching in awe as their childrens almost seem to become animated and say 'hello'. When it was finally time to find out the reveal, Beca grabbed Jesse's hand and turned her head to face the monitor better.
"Baby 'A' seems to be using their sibling to hide, and it's making it difficult to tell. But if I had to predict what the other baby was, I'd say baby 'B' was a girl."
Beca excitedly squeezes Jesse's hand, and laughed as Jesse asked the rhetorical question she knew he was thinking.
"So, that means that baby 'A'..."
"Is probably a girl too? Yes, because they're identical, we know by reasoning that you have two little girls." Dr. Jermaine smiles politely.
Beca smiles at her husband, trying to comfort him when it looked like he had disappointment on her face. But she had no doubt in her mind that he would be a great daddy to two little girls, or even maybe four, because of how he thought women should be treated. She knew he would love them with all his heart, protect them, and raise them to be the best women they could be.
"So, what's the verdict on the other two?" Jesse eagerly asks, waiting with anticipation for them to move on.
"Baby 'C' is…" Dr. Jermaine clicks through many different screens, trying to find the best angle, "Well, it looks like you're outnumbered, daddy." She laughs lightheartedly.
"Wow," Jesse gasps, looking to Beca with wide brown eyes. "I get to have four more Beca's. This really was inevitable that I would be surrounded by four, beautiful women."
Beca both rolled her eyes and felt her heart melt, knowing that Jesse didn't really care what the babies were, as long as they were healthy. He loved family and the idea of four kids was crazy enough, but the fact that he had more to love, he didn't care if they were boys or girls or both.
"Man, I'm so excited Becs," Jesse rambled on the way home, "We can teach them to do anything that I could've taught my sons to do if I had one. We'll take them fishing, and to thread their own hooks, and maybe one of the girls will want to sing or score movies. But if they don't want to follow our paths, that's perfectly fine too." Jesse pauses for a breath, exhausted from the excitement.
"Settle down Jess. We'll make sure they'll have their freedom to discover what they want when they can actually start walking and talking. But for now, they need names."
"Allison and Claire for sure?" He teases and Beca shakes her head.
"Breakfast club stuff is up for debate, maybe for middle names. But I definitely want nothing too crazy, but nothing too traditional either."
Jesse felt that Beca was being such a stickler, a Debbie Downer, considering the fact that the Breakfast Club to him, had felt like it began and shaped their whole relationship. He felt it was a huge part of who he was, and as husband and wife, they were one. He shared her interests, and she pretended to share his.
"How are we gonna know who gets which name? Are we gonna assign each baby letter a name, or wait until they're born to know?" He wonders how they would plan this out so delivery day was less chaotic.
"I think we should pick names, and assign them to whichever baby in each set comes out first. But I want their names to sound good together. So baby 'A' and 'B' are gonna have similar names, but whoever of the two comes out first gets that name."
"Are you thinking similar sounding, or letters, or both?" He asks as he rotates his steering wheel with his left palm, turning into their driveway finally.
Beca sighs, taking in the small exterior and even smaller interior of their starter home and knew immediately that this was not where she would have ever imagined raising four kids, at least not at once. This was going to be too small eventually but Beca knew now was not a good time to consider moving.
As nice and it would be to have more space, (especially since they only had one guest room for when their family came to help) they couldn't imagine or probably even afford the move. But Beca would have to discuss this with Jesse, though she felt he probably felt much the same.
"Jess, don't you even think about moving?" She rhetorically asks, knowing the answer.
"Only when I found out we were having quads."
"We need to move, find a bigger place. Maybe even build a house." She adds in build cautiously.
"Build?" Jesse is caught off guard.
"Like a place we know will be permanent. The girls will up there and we'll get a dog, and have family Christmas', and eventually, maybe even grandchildren." She emphasizes grandchildren to sell it more to her reluctant husband.
"Slow down there, hormones." He calls her, smiling with a slight tease. "We just found out we're going to have four babies, and they could really come very soon. We don't have time to build a house, or even move because chances are you won't make it to term." He educates her about her own pregnancy, wanting to keep a realistic stance on her semi- pouty face.
Beca knew that the babies would be here soon, she just didn't realize how soon. Her babies could be here at thirty-one weeks, nine weeks earlier than her due date. She had hoped at least they would stay in that long, they could come sooner, and the idea of running out of time scared her. She started nesting very early, preparing for the birth. But what was missing, the names, the nursery, and a new home. They needed the room.
Just weeks after finding out the genders, they sat in the nursery, what little had been done, and they rocked back and forth in the chairs, baby books, Beca's from the library in hand. Jesse held a pen in hand, marking down his favorites and little stars in the margarines.
"What do you have written down, Becs?" Jesse looks up from the book, checking on his wife who was running a lock of hair between her lips.
"Huh?" She looks up startled, realizing that he was talking about the books. "Oh, well, nothing too crazy. Just some… names." She stutters.
"You've got nothing, do you?" He smirks and she shrugs, slightly frustrated. "Well," He begins again, looking to his list. "Well, I've got some; Ivy, Harper, Hazel, Nina…"
Beca cuts him off, shaking her head at the names. She didn't feel any of them 'click' per say, and so many of them felt too girly for her.
"I'm wanting something unique. Not super weird or girly, but something that sounds like my child. Like Finley, or Tenley, or even Jude. Jude sounds like a biker chick, or a DJ, and Tenley just sounds tomboy-ish."
"Becs, I don't know. We can guarantee their personalities by naming them like that. They create their own likes, their own personalities, their nicknames. We can't force them to be the alter ego to their names." He assures her, making sure that she not expect something that might not happen.
"Luna is kind of pretty though. And it could be neutral, right?" Jesse asks, knowing a girly name isn't gonna guarantee a "girly- girl.".
Beca grabbed for Jesse's list, wondering how much research he had actually put into names and their meanings. But as it turned out, Jesse was scoring the names as if they were movies from one to five, but they were all names he liked.
"You're scoring their names? Like you do movies?" Beca laughs incredulously. "You're an aca-nerd." She teases, planting a kiss on his lips before standing up with Jesse's assistance, and making her way to the kitchen where she wanted to make a sandwich.
She continues to look at the list, taking a bite as she looked at the scores, laughing, until she saw a large, red "X" over the names.
Everly, rating: 2, Allison, rating: 5 (duh, Breakfast Club),Claire, rating:5 (See previous),Eloise, rating: 4,Luna, rating :4.5,Eleanore, rating: 2, Phoebe (1), Penelope (5)
Beca was confused to why he had crossed the names off after rating them in the first place. This was of course, a list of trial and error, but why would he cross off all the names? She was thinking that there was more, or maybe he was just as fearful at getting attached as she was, only to lose something they have yearned for so very in the making. Was she overthinking? Probably. But how could you not when years of trying for a family was successful after their second IVF attempt, something that doesn't happen as often as most couples hope.
They were ready to quit after their first one failed, the emotional toll too painful to deal with, both before the egg was implanted, and after they found out they didn't take. IVF wasn't the magical cure to infertility, most of the time it actually took many attempts, a misconception they soon learned. And just as equally was it expensive, something they were glad they finally had the financial ability to at least try, and their insurance only covered a sum of it. They had decided the second time, if not a charm, they wouldn't give up their dreams of being parents, even if it wasn't meant to be biologically.
Beca felt that miscarriage was a abstract, dark, painting, and she could vividly picture it: The emotion of all the shades of her emotions, it wasn't something that could just be forgotten, even after the years, and especially not after all the heartbreak. The pain never went away, it just became easier to cope with. She began to get better at handling the painful memories, and slowly spent less time reveling in the past, and looking to the future.
What else was colorful? Adoption: The melting pot of families, growing rich in not just love but in culture, color, new experiences for parents with children of color, cultures and different languages. A chance to learn so much more than just what's in the distance around you. A leap of faith, something out of reach.
She remembered these deep thoughts circling her mind as she lay on the bathroom floor crying, waiting for Jesse to return from work. The date, just three years before, was August seventh, just three days from their anniversary, and she had planned on celebrating their anniversary with him by revealing that she was pregnant.
She had found out just a few days before and wanted to put it off a few more. But as she lay on the cold linoleum floor with her pregnancy test in her hand, sobbing as she stared blankly at the two lines, realizing how quickly life could change. It pained her that she spent a total of three days knowing of her pregnancy, even if she was thankful that she had spent the short time cherishing the baby at all.
"Beca?" She had heard her husband's soothing voice echo from the foyer.
She silently laid there, waiting until she heard his footsteps finally find her on their bathroom floor. She was an embarrassed, tear-stained, curled up ball of emotions, wearing the same ratty gray sweatshirt and leggings she had worn the day before, her hair a rat's nest flopped over on the floor.
"Beca? What's wrong, baby?" He had asked, sliding his back against the counter and sitting beside her.
She had felt that his tone was kind of condescending, like the voice of a father who was trying to comfort his teenage daughter after a breakup. She didn't want pity, she didn't want babying, she wanted the comfort from her adult husband in a way that they should handle it. Sometimes she still wished she could go back, run away from the pain as a child again, but after many times she began to believe it was her fault she couldn't get or stay pregnant, or she felt like she was torturing herself, doing this to herself by trying to get pregnant then failing.
Beca curls up into Jesse, resting her head into his lap and looking up with her blurry, tear filled eyes, unable to imagine the pain they both were about to encounter. She felt wet through her leggings, the blood staining them but she had no will left to get up and change because that wasn't what was important to her right not. It was the disappointment she sought to avoid putting on her husband's face.
Jesse sat in silence, stroking his wife's matted hair from her sticky forehead, unable to understand her as she babbled to herself, her words a slur through her emotions. But what caught his eye was the pregnancy test between the grip of Beca's palm and fingers. He wondered what had really happened. Was this another month of disappointment as she received another negative test? These couldn't be happy tears, he knew that much.
"Beca, I know that this never gets easier, that it's a punch in your empty gut every month, but maybe a break from trying would be best for us…" He starts to rub her back, talking in a calm, slow voice that she found usually so sexy.
"Jesse!" She sobbed, her whole body shaking uncontrollably and she felt that she was being overdramatic.
"Beca, your feelings are valid. Whatever you're feeling is okay to feel and to express. But we can't get through this if we don't talk to each other and what we want moving forward."
Beca shakes her head, feeling a physical hurt in her stomach and her heart as if they were somehow connected and sending waves of pain through her body. This wasn't like any physical pain like cramps or miscarriage. It was an emotional pain so strong that she couldn't move and she was physically feeling the pain of heartbreak and loss.
"What can I do, as your husband, to help you? Can you tell me that?" Jesse offers, unsure how to reassure his wife other than just holding her in his arms, and letting her know that he was in fact, there for her.
"Jess, we lost our baby. We lost the child we so badly wanted and tried for, and there's nothing we can do to fix this. Please, just stay here with me." She whispered the last part as her eyes widened, pleading for more than just this pain to go away.
"A b...baby?" He was dumbfounded, a spark of hope and excitement in his voice before his heart dropped realizing that he hadn't even known of it more than a minute before losing it.
He didn't have the time to celebrate, but he did grieve. This was his baby too and even if he hadn't known about it very long it pained him to think of the loss and even more the physical and emotional toll this was taking on Beca because she had obviously known longer. He didn't know how long he had been oblivious to the fact but knowing Beca, she didn't have the tendency to open up right away and was probably waiting for the right time.
"Beca, you're not in this alone. I've never carried a baby so I can't begin to imagine how you feel, but I'm in this with you. This is for life, you and I. We'll work through this together." He interlocks his hand in hers, giving it a gentle squeeze.
"I feel like I've lost a part of myself. A sense of emptiness, not just a physical one, but like emotional. I've lost a human being I was growing in me. Our human."
"This pain isn't permanent. We'll never fully get over this, but we will learn how to talk about it, how to handle the pain, and eventually we'll slowly start healing." He reassures her, wanting so badly to say something that she hasn't heard before, something other than a cliche, even if it was true.
She was truly selfless, a wonderful wife taking everyone's feelings into consideration, hers, his and that was why she didn't want to tell him. Other than the fact that she was planning something to reveal it to him, she also thought it was a reasonable way to put off telling him.
Of course she was cautiously jumping for joy, but while she was taking in Jesse's feelings, she didn't take into consideration that he would probably have wanted to celebrate with her. Her selflessness got into the way of her thinking ahead, thinking of the outcome of her actually hiding it because she hadn't expected to happen. But you can't plan for these things. 'You can have the best doctors in the world,' Jesse always told her, 'But that won't change the fact that once the embryo is implanted, or the baby is conceived, that it's out of everyone's hands but God's.'
It was hard for her to accept this, the loss, the pain, everything, but little had she known that day that several, short years later she would be pregnant not with just her first kid, but also their last. That she would have four kids all at once and they would be everything they hoped for. That the love she would feel in pregnancy was so indescribable it hurt, and she hadn't even met them yet.
But a part of her felt selfish for not being able to be as excited for these rainbow babies, because a lot of her inside was telling her to be cautious. She was afraid to talk about the possibilities that not all the babies may make it, or they could all be born sick and early. Jesse and her both knew that possibility was likely, yet they thanked God for everyday they still had with the babies.
-XXX-
Beca, heavily pregnant at only twenty-nine weeks, was told to take it easy or possibly be put on bedrest early. But Chloe had wanted to invite her to join herself and the Bella's at a small fundraiser karaoke that Chloe was putting on the sponsor children with disabilities (because this not only her line of work in special education, but her passion to see growth and potential in others). Beca reluctantly agreed, only if she hadn't needed to dance, but hang out in the background of the performance.
"I just don't know Jess, I'm huge already and I could literally pop at anytime with the babies since there's so many at once. Is this really a good idea?" She looks for reassurance in her husband, slightly feeling guilty.
He reaches her windbreaker for her off the coat rack, putting it over her shoulders as she slides her arms in, then she sits down and he helps guide on her flats. It was a mild, late May day and the temperatures were only nosediving further as the day went on.
"Ugh-" She groans as Jesse tries helping her swollen feet into the 'two sizes too small' shoes, tears welling in her eyes with frustration.
"I think you and I both know you deserve a break. Go out with the girls, have fun, raise money. You deserve this, Becs." He smiles, rubbing her left foot as she struggled still with her right.
Beca throws her arms up in frustration and Jesse lightheartedly chuckles, going to their bedroom to retrieve her black ballet-like slippers that they had boughten on vacation when she first had began swelling. Then she grabs Jesse's forearms as he assists her in standing up from their mudroom wooden bench.
The new house had a beautiful mudroom that they saw their girls using one day, maybe during the winter. She imagined them stomping their feet through the front door and muddy snow across the tile, dragging in the wetness of winter with them. Their rosy cheeks and raw hands from building forts would be warmed with cups of steamy hot chocolate she had prepared for them, and Beca laughed at that thought, the mom cliche she thought she would have never wanted before.
The cupboards in the corner would hold their big, thick coats, hats and mittens on the shelves and their boots soaking beneath the hanging coats. Beca was a slob herself but was too lazy to clean the mess of winter clothes off the floor and also the mud. She and Jesse both agreed they'd want to raise their kids with at least some good cleaning habits.
"Jess, don't forget to switch the wash, and please finish putting together the cribs in the quads room. They're coming very soon and we need to have everything that is important ready." She unintentionally nags him as she grabs her keys and heads out.
She picked Chloe up from her home early to help her set up, agreeing to put together the decor and snacks at the kid friendly venue Chloe had picked, a small restaurant that had agreed to lend a place for Chloe to host for a small price.
The room was plain but roomy, with a few windows that let in the spring sun, but overall was dark and musty. It had looked like an abandoned hotel room, and the stage was a square landing, like you would see on a set of stairs, sticking out from the wall, taking up at least a fourth of the room. The karaoke equipment was set up, the two rectangular machines glowing with lit up screens, songs scrolling automatically down the screen.
"Chloe, this place is kinda, gross." Beca bluntly exclaims, looking around at the musty, spider webbed room.
"Well, the outcome isn't expected to be too big, but we definitely need to do some cleaning before they get here. Maybe the word will spread better if we treat it like a sponsored, paid thing." She cheerily informs Beca, glowing as she glances around at her work that was cut out for her.
Beca's phone buzzes several hours later and she is quick to glance at it, seeing that it was both Jesse and Aubrey.
'Got a huge surprise for Chloe's fundraiser.' Aubrey texted.
'Have fun babe. I'll get the cribs done tonight with Benji and Donald. Love you'
She smiled and then deleted the text, able to relax a little more knowing that Jesse did have it under control. It was rare that Jesse didn't get the things he needed to get done, done. He was a hard worker and spent many hours at home watching movies (which didn't sound that bad) and scoring them as Beca sat in her room, making mixes on her work laptop. She had a record label that wanted to pick her and some clients up and debut her album by the beginning of July, and with the babies, she didn't have a lot of time to finish writing and producing them.
Then the time came when all the Bella's came piling in and soon after, the citizens of Georgia. Slowly then a little quicker they flooded in, sitting at the tables, finely decorated by Aubrey's fine skills. The tablecloths were black, candies arranged neatly and donation jars with flowers glued to the lids in the center. It all came together nicely and while everyone began to converse the Bella's met up by the restrooms, discussing their final plans for the karaoke.
First the guests would have a chance to go up and sing, an optional donation for each song, and it would be kind of like a club. But before the end of the night the Bella's would hold a mini performance, receiving any and all donations in a box at the edge of the stage.
"Let's aca-finish this. For Chloe and the purpose of this event, the children." Aubrey smiles, glancing around to all the girls, ready and prepped.
"We may have been out of practice for a while, and though all of us still have fat hearts, some of have gotten fat." Fat Amy jokes, Beca catching an accusing eye at her.
Beca felt a hot flash come on, and she couldn't tell if it was the hot lights Chloe had insisted be right on the stage, or if it was from huffing and puffing around with four babies in her stomach. She took a quick swig from her metal water bottle, secretly wishing it could be alcohol in the bottle. She loved Chloe lots, but sometimes she was a bit extreme and too much for the other girls.
"Becs? Are you okay?" Chloe catches Beca off guard with her hand on her shoulder, stopping Beca before they prepare to enter the room and get on stage.
Beca nods, unsure how she really felt herself. The braxton hicks weren't really a new thing, she had been feeling her uterus tightening up and clenching for weeks now. Usually a glass of water and sitting down with her feet up would subside them, and she figured she needed to sit. But what worried her was the nausea and suddenly hot all over fever, but she pinned it on all the stress, decorating and nervousness.
"Well you know Chloe, carrying four babies is being like half of the "octomom" lady. I look, feel and act like I'm carrying a load for a dump truck." She responds and Chloe nods in sympathy for her.
Chloe rubbed Beca's back as she helped her up the steps onto the stage, into the hot lights as they began formation, the song beginning in the background. They all took a deep breath as Ashley began with bass, and the other's joined in, carrying the melody.
Beca felt that the lights were blurring her vision from dizziness, and she wanted more than anything to sit down. She was in the back and could have easily slipped off if she wanted, but she felt dedicated to helping Chloe and didn't want to let her down. She was very uncomfortable, her back aching and feet swelling to four times their actual size, and it became clear that this would be her last hurrah! Before the babies came.
"Chloe?" Beca whispered in between sets, "I'm gonna count out of this one." Beca began to slip away, hoping to draw attention away from herself, but instead only attracted more.
"Beca?!" She heard one of the Bella's gasp before feeling a sea of eyes and a bunch of Bella's around her limp body.
She had gone to exit only to trip over the microphone cord, slipping off of the stage in her worn and gripless ballet flats, falling forward and rolling from her stomach to her side in pain. Her arms had only semi softened the fall with slower reflexes, but she still felt in pain, her ankle twisted beneath her other leg. Her heart pounded not only from the anxiety of having everyone witness her clumsiness, but the thoughts immediately went to and stayed on her four babies, who up until that point, were just chilling in her womb.
"Cynthia Rose, there's no need for CPR." She hears Stacey exclaim, pulling the black woman away from Beca.
Beca laid with her eyes closed, fully conscious despite feeling everything spin around her. She was only truly conscious of her thoughts and not the outside world. She could only distantly hear everyone talking but not what they were saying. She only knew when they had helped her up and into Chloe's car, taking her to the hospital where they could tend to her ankle and the four unborn babies now disturbed from their sleep in utero.
