As it would turn out, Nana had great timing… Spencer was woken up again, just over two hours later. This time by Maeve.
He felt her shake him gently until he opened his eyes. It took a few minutes for his eyes to readjust to being open in the darkness of their pitch-black room.
"Spencer…Spencer wake up!" She whispered.
"I'm up…I'm awake…"
"I think it's time… the twins…they're coming now…"
"What?!" He yelled, half rolling, half falling out of bed onto the floor with the entire comforter wrapped around him.
"Now?!" He asked, shaking it off and rising to his feet.
"Yes now." She said, wincing in pain. "The contractions are only fifteen minutes apart."
"Alright, alright… where's the…? Oh here they are… Here's my go-bag, and yours…" He said, setting the two large, black, duffle bags full of clothes and whatever else they might need on the bed.
"While you were asleep, Nana got here…"
"She's here?" Maeve asked. "She drove all the way down here from Mt. Bedford through that?" She asked pointing out the window into the rain outside.
"Yes… arriving at one-thirty AM I light add… She's a force of nature…and without that force of nature, at least two, soon to be three generations of this family, starting with my mom…wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be doing this right now…"
"Nana! It's happening, we're going now!" He said.
Before he even finished, she appeared as a shadow in the doorway.
"Well what are we sitting around here waiting for? Come on, I'll drive and we'll take the van…"
"You brought the van? Grandpa's van? The one that's older than me?"
"Old Reliable… that thing got me through the freak October snowstorm of '74… in the middle of which, your cousin was born…"
"Ok, fine… the van it is…." He conceded, helping Maeve to her feet.
Then the threesome headed for the car. The drive to the hospital was long. Spencer was starting to wonder if they would ever see the entrance through the dark early morning and pouring rain, and seeing the pain on Maeve's face only made him more anxious. He put out his hand for her to grab and she squeezed it so tight he was sure she was going to break it.
Then finally they saw the hospital's brightly lit entrance sign… they were almost there.
On the way to the delivery room, Spencer thought he would pass out and he didn't look like he was very far from doing exactly that.
But he didn't.
Over the next ten hours, Maeve felt her children get closer and closer to joining the outside world for the first time. She kept picturing their faces and it made her pain easier to stand… or so she thought…this idea was gone when she heard Spencer's fingers crack and heard him hiss in pain, trying not to cry out in front of her.
Finally at one forty-five in the afternoon, a tiny little girl, with a soaked, but relatively full head of brown hair and jade-green eyes came, screaming into the world.
Spencer tentatively cut his daughter's umbilical cord and watched sheepishly, desperate to hold her, as she was carried away by a nurse to be dried, weighed, and measured…
Still, what had already been the longest ten hours of their lives, was not over yet… the little girl still had to be followed by her twin brother.