Still off the Key of Reason
Chapter 25: Let Me Know, Are You Ready for Me?
The Lamaze classes were Rachel's idea. She didn't know what "Lamaze" meant, or who it was, or what actually happened during those classes-and really, they could be some kind of cult-but she knew pregnant women took them and appreciated them, so they couldn't be a complete waste of money.
Signing up had seemed like a good idea at the time.
But Rachel's ideas to walk Benjamin Bunny through Central Park and to buy industrial cases of blue Jell-O had also been good ideas at the time. Benjamin developed an agoraphobic complex and Quinn spent a night vomiting up blue in the bathroom.
The goal of Lamaze, as it turned out, was to increase a mother's confidence in her ability to give birth. Quinn was finally taking time off work, and Rachel suspected she'd only agreed to take the classes out of boredom.
"People have been having babies for thousands of years without needing instruction." Quinn had declared, arms draped over Rachel's shoulders to peer at the computer.
"But it might help!" Rachel argued. "It could be fun!"
Quinn rocked the chair back and forth. "It's probably a waste of money."
Rachel's face had fallen, a bit exaggeratedly because she knew exactly how to press the right buttons, and Quinn had sighed softly and tilted sideways to kiss her ear.
"We can do it if you'd like, little bear."
Like Play-Doh in her hands.
Which is why Rachel had nobody to blame but herself when she was seated on a rubber mat on the floor of the YMCA, trying to convince Quinn to continue the breathing exercises and listening to their instructor demonstrate a technique that sounded like it would be more likely to incite respiratory failure than to assist in childbirth.
And Rachel had been consciously working on her breathing technique since she was two. She knew what she was talking about.
She sighed and rocked forward on her knees to see Quinn's scowling, flushed face. "Just a few more minutes, baby." She pleaded. "One deep breath in, and then four short-"
"No, Rachel." Quinn sat solidly on the floor, legs crossed, finished with pretending to be in labor.
Rachel heard a screech from the other side of the room, and she turned to find that it was just one of the other couples completing the exercise. Some of their behavior was so obscene that Rachel was totally prepared for one of them to accidentally give birth.
It was a loud, interactive environment, and Rachel knew that Quinn was uncomfortable. The room was large, but warm, and the mats smelled like rubber and the air smelled like chlorine.
"I'll keep doing it with you, bear." Rachel suggested, and then demonstrated, pressing her hands to her diaphragm for extra effect.
This breathing technique was actually new to her, and she found herself running out of oxygen quickly. She was choking on air when their instructor popped up.
"Let's see your breathing, Quinn!" the peppy woman named Miranda suggested brightly.
Quinn shook her head and dropped her eyes to Rachel's boots.
"I think we're still…working on it." Rachel said quickly, glancing over her shoulder in bewilderment when a desperate scream sounded from another couple.
Miranda nodded. "Sure, sure! Just remember, panic breathing cuts down the amount of ox-"
"Practicing breathing is a waste of time." Quinn blurted. She shifted her legs and shook her head. "I-sorry. I don't-it's part of the autonomic nervous system, right. I can practice all I want, but once-once the baby comes, it'll-it's all adrenergic and out of my control."
Miranda crouched down. Rachel rested a hand on Quinn's thigh when she stiffened and tried to contextually derive the meaning of adrenergic.
"Particular breathing techniques have actually been proven to help, Quinn."
Quinn didn't say anything, and Rachel narrowed her eyes because her wife looked more worried than annoyed. More anxious than "God, I'm surrounded by idiots."
"Would you like to try again?" Miranda asked encouragingly.
Quinn twisted slightly so that she could meet Rachel's gaze without catching anybody else's. "Humans have the hardest birthing process in the animal kingdom."
Rachel nodded slowly.
"I-this baby's head…" Quinn trailed off. She looked stricken with whatever direction she was heading, and she shook her hair around and tapped her foot against the mat.
"Baby, tell me what's wrong." Rachel whispered.
Quinn exhaled in frustration and rubbed a hand against her forehead. "I-I work with animal dystocia." She started loudly. "Complications in birth. Not-not every day, not very often at all because they're primed to be wild. To have their babies in-" Quinn waved an arm around. "-I don't know, the middle of a field."
Rachel pictured Quinn having their baby in the middle of a field. Her eyes widened, intrigued, and then horrified, and she shoved that thought away.
"But people have so many things that can go wrong, and I'm not-" Quinn sighed hopelessly. "And breathing in a certain way-I mean-it doesn't make their heads any smaller."
Rachel almost smiled at that. She flashed back to a conversation she'd had over breakfast a couple years ago, when Quinn was mixing chocolate pudding with Rice Krispies and rumbling on about elephants.
Rachel tilted her head conversationally and poked Quinn's thigh. "Hey, bear. Look at me."
Quinn complied, hazel eyes distressed.
"Did you know elephants carry their babies for almost two years?"
Quinn stared.
"The birth can drag on for two nights." Rachel continued like she was providing brand new information. Quinn's chin lifted suspiciously. "And then the baby weighs around two hundred and fifty pounds. That's a big head, Quinn."
Quinn rubbed at her eyes. "Compared to elephantine birth canals, it's not really that-"
"Quinn, our baby's fingers will be this big." Rachel held up her hand with about an inch between her index finger and thumb.
"I will be there with you, holding your hand, feeding you ice, squeezing or crying or screaming or breathing, or doing whatever in the world you would like me to do, the whole time."
Rachel was pretty much expecting herself to pass out at some point, but at least she'd be present.
"Your body will get you through this." Rachel assumed. "Humans were wild once too, you know."
Quinn scoffed lightly and Rachel smiled.
Tarzan was wild. The Thornberrys were insane. The rest were just uncivilized at the time.
"What if I can't…It's going to hurt." Quinn remarked quietly.
Rachel tilted forward and grasped her ears because Quinn's eyes wouldn't stay in one place. "Babies are born every day, Quinn. You'll-we'll- get through this."
"You have to be there, Rachel. There's-I won't be able to do it if you're not there."
Rachel inhaled deeply. "Quinn, do you know who I am?"
Quinn's brows furrowed slightly in confusion.
"Who am I, baby?" Rachel asked again, tugging on Quinn's ears.
"You're…what? You're Rachel."
Rachel nodded. "Who else am I?"
Quinn's look of confusion was morphing into one that said Rachel was acting like a moron.
"Humor me." Rachel pressed, eager to get to her point.
Quinn's lips twitched. "You are Rachel Barbra Berry-Fabray." She indulged. "You're small, odd, and scrappy. You steal my socks and get inordinately angry when I don't wear any because you're hot-blooded like a Latin dancer and you call me an iguana. You-"
"Quinn." Rachel didn't know how she'd lost control of the situation.
Quinn smiled softly, amused. "You're my little bear."
And Rachel completely forgot what her point was. Quinn twisted her head and knocked Rachel's hands off her ears. She was Rachel Barbra Berry, and how in the world could anybody ever doubt that Rachel Barbra Berry would be at the birth of her child?
"Of course I'll be there." She promised simply.
If somebody chopped off her legs on the other side of town, in the rain in gridlock traffic, Rachel would drag herself through the streets to get to Quinn. It would be dramatic and wonderful.
Quinn struggled to lean forward to kiss Rachel, digging her fingers into Rachel's thighs to keep her balance.
"Why do you taste like chocolate?" Rachel wondered, wholly unsurprised. She hadn't seen any chocolate, but it was probably running through Quinn's blood by now.
Quinn's eyes widened slightly. "I don't know."
"You don't know."
Quinn bit her tongue and focused on the rubber mat.
Rachel's lips quirked. "And you're not concerned at all that you taste like chocolate when you haven't actually had any."
Quinn puffed out her cheeks and dug her hands into her sweatpant pockets.
It's not like chocolate had been banned; they'd just cut back a little. Less Hershey's, more carrots. Anything that wasn't blue Jell-O.
"I bet it's in your pocket, bear." Rachel sat up on her knees and tried to reach over Quinn's lap, and Quinn laughed and pressed a hand to her chest to hold her away.
They'd have to practice their breathing exercises at home because absolutely nothing was getting done here.
"What is it?" Rachel prodded, trying to squirm her way across Quinn's knees without inverting them. "Do they have Easter eggs out already? Those mini Kit-Kats you like?"
Quinn rolled her eyes and stopped struggling, and Rachel plunged a hand into her pocket and emerged with a handful of Kisses. They were melting because of the fleecy pants, and Rachel studied them and raised an amused eyebrow at Quinn.
"Don't act like you haven't been smuggling coffee at your show, baby." Quinn defended.
Pssht. Well.
Rachel scoffed. She couldn't deny it. "I wasn't- I was going to say we'll get you some more on the way home. Some that aren't melting."
Quinn's eyes sparkled. She looked pleased and she rubbed Rachel's thighs where her nails had dug in.
Miranda was having an exceedingly loud conversation off to their right about the benefits of giving birth standing up, like gravity, and Rachel pictured baby giraffes falling six feet to the ground when they're born. Like baby hippos stepping onto the shore for the first time.
A woman having a baby for the first time. It had to be moderately frightening. So Rachel would make macaroni later, and help Quinn with these breathing exercises, and maybe try to catch baby carrots in her mouth because it always made Quinn laugh. Really, it was all that mattered.
~ooooooooooooo~
By the end of the second trimester, Rachel was realizing that pregnancy dazed Quinn. It made her almost delirious, like she was tired, except the insomnia had passed and left a small cloud of confusion and forgetfulness in its wake.
Rachel found Quinn's mittens in the freezer one morning and had to sit down on the kitchen floor she was laughing so hard.
So Rachel was the one attempting to assemble their brand new crib, because Quinn seemed to be losing her grasp on reality with each passing week and they didn't want the thing to collapse with their baby inside. Rachel seemed to have run out of screws, and she was ready to call Puck because that leg was definitely not supposed to be diagonal to the others.
Cornelius and Barnaby kept stalking by, eyeing the slats of the crib. Ready to take them off her hands.
Rachel shoved the hardware away with a frustrated sigh and headed down the hall to what would soon be the nursery. She was smiling before she got there, because she could hear Quinn, and Quinn was singing "She's a Lady," and dancing-or trying to dance-around the room with Cloud.
Cloud had pale green paint on his paws and tail, and Rachel was glad they'd thought to lay plastic over the hardwood floors.
Quinn spun around theatrically, caught sight of Rachel, dropped Cloud's paws, and increased her volume, deepening her voice because it was something that never failed to make Rachel laugh.
"Well she's all you'd ever want, she's the kind they'd like to flaunt and take to dinner." Quinn pointed at Rachel and danced her way over, disheveled and bright-eyed and wearing her reading glasses because she'd probably lost her contacts again.
Not that she needed glasses to be able to paint a dinosaur onto a nursery wall. Rachel would inquire about them later.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, she's a lady, talkin' about that little lady, and that lady is mine."
Rachel shrieked when Quinn spun her around, because they were bound to end up in a can of paint, and she kicked her leg out to shut the door so that Cloud couldn't wander around the rest of the apartment. Quinn seemed to run out of words halfway through the song, so she hummed a few bars and then stilled and smiled expectantly down at Rachel.
Rachel laughed because she was just ridiculous. She reached up to straighten Quinn's glasses. "Working hard?"
Quinn hummed and nodded at the wall to their left. "I finished the dinosaur."
It was a pastel blue and yellow smiling stegosaurus that took up half the wall, and Rachel knew their little boy would love it.
"It's perfect, bear." She declared, leaning up to kiss the corner of Quinn's mouth. She rubbed at some green paint that Quinn had somehow managed to streak along her neck.
"I did the borders as well." Quinn pointed up at the wallpaper, the original E.H. Shepard Pooh Bear illustrations she'd insisted on because the modern Disney version was not allowed in their house. There was a poster of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and one of Cornelius and Barnaby in Hello! Dolly, and Rachel felt guilty because all she'd been doing was bumbling around with a crib that would surely collapse as soon as she stood it up.
"I'm doing the elephant next." Quinn stated, glancing around the room. "But Cloud fell in the paint so we stopped for a moment."
To dance and sing Tom Jones. Rachel's kind of logic.
She crossed the room and bent down to grab a wet cloth, and then called Cloud over to her so that she could clean off his paws and fluffy white tail before he became permanently green.
"Why are you wearing your glasses, baby?" Rachel wondered, craning her head away while Cloud snuffled her hair.
"I was reading the paint cans. And I think...I think my contacts are in the car."
Rachel smiled to herself. "You have no idea where they are, do you?"
Quinn crouched down, groaning a bit, and steadied herself with Rachel's knees. "They're in the car, Rachel."
"I bet if I go check the car right now I won't find them."
"I bet if I go check on the crib you're supposed to be building I'll find a mess with three legs and a pile of extra screws."
Rachel couldn't really counter that. She pursed her lips and focused on Cloud and squirmed away when Quinn tipped forward to kiss her neck. Quinn stood up again, and Rachel pushed helpfully on her butt to provide some leverage.
And then Quinn started humming "What's New, Pussycat?" and Rachel snorted and waited for Quinn to break fully into song.
Quinn spun lightly around in some kind of fouetté, and her hair fell over her eyes, and she was halfway through the first line when she froze and choked on her words and clutched her stomach.
Rachel fell sideways into the wall in her rush to stand up. "Quinn, what's-"
Quinn cut her off by seizing her wrist and placing Rachel's hand on her belly, under both of her own.
It was a light tapping Rachel could feel under her palm. More like a flutter. Warm and solid and alive, either dancing to Quinn's song or joining in on the ballet, and-oh God, their little boy was going to be a star!
Rachel pressed a hand over her mouth, and then shook her head and put it on Quinn's belly so that she could feel as much as possible. Quinn watched her with an awed smile.
"You got him to dance." Rachel mumbled tearfully.
Quinn chuckled. "He's very small. This is the hardest he's ever kicked."
"He's perfect."
"He's going to be like you." Quinn said softly, delighted with the idea. "Maybe he likes dancing."
Rachel slid her hands under Quinn's fleecy sweatshirt so that she could feel more closely. Quinn held her wrist gently and moved her hand to where it needed to be.
"It's probably your voice." Rachel murmured. "It's sweet and light and comforting."
Even if it was singing "What's New, Pussycat?" at the time.
Rachel bent over and kissed Quinn's belly. "Do you like your dinosaur, baby boy? Mommy and Cloud painted it for you."
Quinn laughed softly and ran a hand through Rachel's disheveled hair.
"We're getting everything ready for you." Rachel whispered. "I'm putting together a crib right now. It's not…safe at the moment, but I promise it will be when you get here. We love you."
Rachel let Quinn's sweatshirt drop again, and then straightened up and hugged her wife and pressed her lips against her neck. She smelled like Peppermint Pattie cookies and leftover candy canes, and Rachel briefly wondered if their baby was under the impression that he was growing up in Candyland.
From Candyland to dinosaurs and pastels and Pooh Bear and a dog with green paws.
~ooooooooooo~
Quinn was waddling by week thirty-one. And out of her mind, like every odd part of her had been amplified. She wore wooly socks and her turkey sweater, and switched to full-time maternity leave and wrote down all of her thoughts in a blue leather journal for the book she was writing. She made Rachel's favorite foods for dinner, and vegan brownies, and she definitely confused a few ingredients multiple times, but Rachel still ate them.
And then Quinn would try them, and gag, and throw everything away, and feed Rachel vegan jellybeans and take her back to their bedroom because she was perfect for eating them anyway.
Quinn also slowed. She slept like a lion, sprawled out on the couch or the bed or the living room floor, in the sun, surrounded by various animals and abandoned food and books.
Rachel finished a show on a Thursday night in March and came home to find Quinn lying backwards on their bed, absolutely naked except for her stripy socks on the pillows. And Rachel wasn't surprised at all. Any opportunity.
Quinn tried to twist to see behind her, but rolling from her side onto her back was far too difficult, so she heaved a frustrated sigh and pressed the side of her face into the blanket.
Rachel smiled and loomed over her and bent down to kiss her forehead.
"Should I turn the air on, baby?" she asked softly.
Quinn blinked up at her and absently grasped one of Rachel's cheeks. "I can't get comfortable."
Rachel eyed Quinn's flushed body. "Are you too hot?" she tried again.
Quinn sighed. "I watched Robin Hood today."
"Quinn, do you want me to turn the air conditioning on?" Rachel asked slowly, patiently, trying to keep a straight face.
"No, please. I watched Brob-Robin Hood today, Rachel."
Rachel rounded the bed and climbed on next to Quinn, trailing a hand lovingly over her belly and up between her breasts. Quinn shivered and pulled her closer.
"Which one, bear?" Rachel asked, because there were about five thousand Robin Hoods she knew of. She stroked Quinn's collarbone and writhed around slightly to pry her boots off with her feet.
"The real one." Quinn murmured, and Rachel hummed vaguely because that didn't help at all.
"With real people?"
"And rabbits."
Rachel studied Quinn's eyes, and they were hazy and tired, but awake. Maybe.
"You know…in his Merry Adventures, it says 'a cracked egg cannot be cured.'" Quinn reached down to the left and came up with a cookie, and Rachel wondered where the hell that had been hidden. Under the blankets?
"Like Humpty Dumpty." Quinn mumbled, crumbly lips against Rachel's cheek. "When he fell off the wall. And nobody could put him back together again."
If anybody ever questioned how Rachel got through eight shows a week on Broadway, how she danced and sang and greeted her fans and gave interviews and still had energy left, this was their answer.
It was bottled up laughter caused by Quinn, and it acted as a battery for Rachel.
"What are you talking about, bear?"
Quinn hummed. "I learned that today. I just-maybe Robin Hood knew the nursery rhyme. A cracked egg cannot be cured. Humpty Dumpty can't be mended. I don't know which came first."
"Oh, that's-"
"Can you touch me please, Rachel?"
Rachel's brow furrowed at the interruption, and she brushed Quinn's hair out of her eyes to be able to see them clearly.
"Can I-baby, I'm sorry, are you awake?" she finally checked, and Quinn nodded and rolled slightly to wrap her in a half-octopus trap. Her large belly prevented a full one.
"How was your show?" Quinn whispered.
Rachel almost laughed. She was having such a hard time with this conversation.
"Quinn, baby, how would you like me to touch you?" she asked instead, and she pressed her lips to the spot right under Quinn's jaw because she already had some idea of the answer.
"Do you think I'm-my boobs are too big, and I'm so…" Quinn looked down at her leg curled over Rachel. "Do you think I'm-I'm still…"
Rachel started discreetly stroking a thumb along the underside of Quinn's breast. "Still what, baby?"
"I had cookies and carrots after dinner." Quinn admitted quietly. "And then I stayed in this spot all evening. Like a whale, Rachel."
Rachel sat up and stripped off her scarf and coat because she could see where this was going.
"Big blue whales." Quinn drawled dazedly.
And then Rachel laid back down, with one leg between Quinn's, and put her mouth back on that spot on Quinn's neck. She traced Quinn's side and wondered how to tell her wife that her boobs could never be too big.
"You know what I thought when I first walked in here?" she whispered, voice a little thick.
Quinn shook her head, hands finding the belt loops of Rachel's pants.
"I thought damn." Rachel drawled honestly, finding the time fit for mild obscenity. "My wife is the sexiest woman, and she's naked on our bed, and there's nothing I'd rather do than make love to her right now."
Quinn swallowed. "But you didn't."
Rachel smiled. She dragged her tongue down where she'd been nibbling on Quinn's neck. "You needed to tell me about Humpty Dumpty first."
And a load of other nonsense vaguely strung together.
"But-but now…" Quinn's eyes rolled a bit, and she pulled her fingers out of Rachel's belt loops and ran them up the back of her shirt instead.
"You are stunning. And glowing and merry and graceful." Rachel punctuated each word with a kiss to Quinn's collarbone. "So beautiful, baby."
"You are too." Quinn returned breathlessly. "I-I had cookies earlier."
Rachel dropped a hand and kneaded Quinn's thigh. "You already told me that, bear." She reminded gently.
Quinn arched her back, as much as a pregnant woman thirty-one weeks along could arch her back. "Oh-that's-oh."
"Just relax, baby."
No Humpty Dumpty or Robin Hood or cookies or rabbits. No discomfort or exhaustion or fear or insecurity, because there was no way Quinn could sleep through this. Just Rachel and her small hands and soft blouse and hair that smelled like apples.
On a bed of crumbs with Jelly watching from the corner of the room.
"Your boobs can never be too big." Rachel mumbled later, when they both laid there, curled up and warm and naked except for their socks, backwards on the bed with a blanket pulled over their heads.
"They can. Like…mastitis in cows."
Rachel toyed with stray strands of blonde hair. "You're not a cow."
Quinn hummed. "I watched Robin Hood today." she informed, again, squeezing Rachel tightly.
Rachel chuckled into her neck. "I know, bear."
"I like…King-King James Christopher Robin Hood Berry-Fabray."
She definitely wasn't fully asleep.
"King baby Jem." Rachel mused.
"And Humpty Dumpty." Quinn sighed like she'd finally said everything she ever needed to say.
Half of it made no sense at first, but baby Jem was due in nine weeks and Rachel was learning as she went. Never buy industrial cases of Jell-O. Never wander off by yourself in IKEA. Go with the flow where pregnant women are concerned, because Quinn's hormones would level back out soon enough.
Just be there. Make cookies. Dance a little, sing a little. Never walk rabbits through Central Park.
Quinn squeezed Rachel closer and nuzzled into her dark hair.
Peppermint Patties and apples smelled wonderfully together.
~ooooooooooo~
Quinn insisted on attending at least a couple of Rachel's shows a week. She'd get up about eleven times to pee, and she fell asleep during the second act once, but she brought Rachel flowers every time and always struggled to her feet for a standing ovation.
It was the beginning of April, and Quinn was three weeks away from her due date, settled solidly and mildly uncomfortably into her front row seat because she refused to begin bed rest so early. On stage, Cornelius was hiding in an armoire and Rachel was pressed up against its doors preparing to sing "Motherhood March."
Quinn loved the song because it was peppy and strong and let Rachel strut around the stage, but Rachel wasn't surprised when her wife left her seat in the middle of the first verse. It would be the second time within an hour, and Rachel sang the line "if you see him as he's trampling through the grapes of wrath" and kept an eye out for Quinn's return from the bathroom.
It came minutes later, at the start of "Dancing," and Rachel only caught a glimpse of Quinn before focusing on the song and stepping around the stage with Cornelius. Her voice was light and her movements graceful, and she spun Cornelius off for his verse and then cast her eyes to the audience.
Even in the dark, Quinn's golden hair stood out. But she was bent forward in her seat, eyes closed, and Rachel nearly missed the cue for her next line.
"Turn around, turn around, try floating through the air!" she sang brightly, one eye on her wife, masking everything going through her head.
She wondered if Quinn was asleep, doubled over like that, but she looked back and Quinn was sitting up, stiff and pained and anxious. One hand gripped her armrest and the other dug into her thigh.
Cornelius sang "My heart is about to burst, my head is about to pop," and Rachel added "my wife is about to have a baby" in her mind.
She caught Quinn's eye when the song ended, and Quinn lifted her chin. Rachel didn't know what that meant, but it was dark and she was overheating because her dress was long and heavy,, and her massive hat was obstructing her view.
She hoped Quinn would meet her backstage before the second act.
Quinn left her seat during the last scene of Act 1, and the fact that Rachel was able to keep singing and configure her face to match Dolly's emotions was really a testament to her talent.
Mike met her in the wings when she hurried off the stage.
"I think Quinn's in labor." He informed, beaming and clutching his clipboard, and Rachel wanted to smack him because she couldn't be in labor yet.
They still had three weeks to go. Rachel had a second act to get through. She was making spaghetti for dinner.
But she didn't say anything. She didn't even stop. She tore the hat from her head and the gloves from her hands and ran past their stage crew and an alcove of props, and everything passed in slow motion.
She was underwater. Had they weighted this dress down with lead?
Rachel rounded a corner, stepped on the hem of her dress, and knocked into the wall, landing awkwardly on the side of her foot so that pain shot up her leg and her back until she felt nauseous.
It was a fantastic start.
"Shit, shit, shit." She mumbled, slowing considerably to hobble-jog the rest of the way to her dressing room.
Quinn was pacing in small circles, flushed and sweating and slightly breathless, hands on her hips and her belly and everywhere because she couldn't hold them still.
Rachel went straight to her. "Quinn, are you-what's going-"
"I think he's coming, Rachel." Quinn's voice was high. Pained, on the verge of something.
Rachel's mind went blank. She could not remember anything she'd ever learned in her life. Where was she and what was she doing and how in the world had she gotten to this point?
"Rachel." Quinn whined and hunched forward, and it was like a kick in the back because Rachel shot forward and wrapped an arm around her wife and held her close.
"Okay, baby. You're okay, baby." She assured, stroking Quinn's hair until it passed. "Everything's okay."
When Quinn was upright again, Rachel regained her senses. Got her shit together. She unzipped her damn lead weight dress because it was giving her heat stroke, and replaced it with a t-shirt and sweats that she'd left in her dressing room.
She spun in circles, and the shirt went on inside out, and wow her ankle was throbbing, but she seized her keys and a jacket and Quinn's hand and moved towards the door.
"Did you hurt yourself, baby?" Quinn asked breathlessly, trying to keep up with her.
Rachel slowed and smiled, as calmly as she could. "I'm okay, bear."
"You're limping." Quinn pressed.
Rachel couldn't deny it. She'd managed to injure her ankle in an ill-advised, spontaneous, idiotic sprint backstage.
"It's alright, Quinn. Let's focus on the baby."
Quinn looked unsure, but in too much discomfort to push further.
"Karen!" Rachel bellowed, hurrying down the hall and hoping her understudy was around to hear this. "You're taking over! I'll be at the hospital!"
Her last sentence was cut off by the exit door swinging shut behind Quinn, blasting them with cold air. She knew Mike would be able to take care of things here. Rachel stopped on the sidewalk to catch her breath, just so that she wouldn't lead them on a frantic dash through traffic.
Quinn clutched sporadically at her lower back and at her belly and glanced across the street.
Rachel searched for a cab.
"Rachel, they're-they're giving away free sundaes there." Quinn murmured, eyeing the place with interest.
What better time for ice cream?
"We're going to have to pass on that." Rachel said softly, running through a list of people who needed to be called.
Her dads. Her neighbors because the dogs were in the yard. Puck, Santana, Brittany, Sam, Kurt, and Blaine. Lisa. Tom. Everybody she'd ever met in her life.
Quinn hummed and stepped forward and clung to Rachel's side while Rachel hailed a cab. Quinn took one step towards it, and then froze, and Rachel fired off a text to Santana to let everybody know what was happening.
"My-my water just broke." Quinn murmured.
In the dark, on the sidewalk outside a theater across from a place with free sundaes.
Rachel sucked in a breath. All of this was happening three weeks too soon. She was leaving a show halfway through, and tomorrow would be Easter, and she could feel Quinn's chocolate eggs in her sweatpant pockets and Quinn's hand, warm and sweaty, in her own.
How had Quinn managed to store her chocolate eggs in Rachel's sweats?
Rachel shut the cab door behind them and kissed Quinn's cheek and directed the driver to the hospital.
This was happening, whether they were ready or not.