Chapter 21
When It Will Be Us

Though they had all been sent on home after this long day of waiting in the hospital, which often felt as though the air was filled with some kind of sleep inducer, Maya and Lucas had not gone to sleep as their roommates had done already. He might have gone, but he could see she wasn't able to turn off all these thoughts and feelings brought on by Willow's delivery, wouldn't be able to go to sleep if she tried, so he would stay up with her until she could.

"We should take all this stuff upstairs," Maya declared, walking into the living room to find Willow's offerings still where they had been left. "Oh, and there's…" she indicated the stain on the couch and down to the floor.

"I'll get on that," Lucas decided, indicating the couch.

"Think you'll be able to get it out?"

"Well, one of the good things about me growing up around my mother is I've picked up on a lot of tips and tricks for stain removal… This one is going to be a bit out of my depth…" he admitted as he gingerly inspected the cushion.

"But it will come in handy when we have a tiny human that pees and poops and pukes all over the place…" Maya chimed in, cringing as she looked on.

"Ah, the three Ps," he nodded 'sagely,' making her laugh. "Will you think any less of me if I call my mother right now?"

"There is no less for you," she assured him. "You've reached levels of high esteem where you've just maxed out," she held up her hand as high as it could go. "Besides, if we have any hope of anyone sitting in that spot ever again, we're going to have to call in the expert."

Getting Melinda Friar on Skype late in the evening, at this point in time, they found, was good for little more than a panic attack. She had immediately gotten under the assumption that Maya had gone into labor, or something else was wrong with the baby, and it had taken her husband's coming along to calm her down again. Finally, they were able to assure her that all was well and that they needed her help with a stain. She'd stopped all at once and looked almost annoyed. Why would they call her at this time of day, making her assume the worst, if this was just about a stain?

Once they had explained to her the nature of this stain however, revealing that Willow had had her baby that day, they had finally gotten access to The Stain Expert. They half expected her to put on one of those magnifying goggles with added lenses to flip into place and see even closer. They showed her 'the site' and she quickly started to instruct her son on what to collect. As he went to do as told, Maya was left with the phone and her future mother-in-law.

"How are you doing, Maya dear?" Melinda asked, sounding like she could just sense the future mother's distress.

"I'm alright," Maya nodded at first, though after a beat it felt like she needed to be more honest. "Yesterday was my last day at work," she reminded her, to which Melinda gave a knowing nod. "And then today was supposed to be about sitting back, kind of taking it easy. Instead, there was Willow, and the hospital, and… It all made everything feel so real, about our own baby coming."

"Oh, yes, I went through something similar with a woman I'd met in Lamaze class," Melinda recalled. "Happened right in class, so you can only imagine, a load of heavily pregnant women swarming about," she laughed, which made Maya laugh along, only for a moment, as she was then reminded of how the day had turned out in the end.

"There were complications with Willow," she revealed, and Melinda gasped. "Her grandmother said she was okay now, but…"

"But you spiraled," Lucas' mother guessed.

"Pretty much," Maya nodded. Zola is here. Willow is okay.

"They're going to take great care of her," Melinda promised.

"No, I know," Maya insisted. "I just…"

Her free hand had been resting at her belly all this time, slowly moving along its curve as she spoke. Now she looked at herself, thinking about her boy in there. He would move, and he would kick, acting at times like he had a mind of his own already, and still… If he was pulled from her now, he'd be left to face some tough odds of survival. As much as she told herself that it was different with Willow, that she actually was full term, that Zola was good to come out when she did… Something had gone wrong. Mother and daughter were both going to be fine, that was what they were being told, but no matter how many times she heard it, how many times she reminded herself, it still felt like her heart would burst out of her chest as she contemplated what could or would happen when her son started to come.

"This is going to be most wonderful and the most terrifying moment of your life, it's normal to be scared," Melinda assured her. "I wish I could tell you it would get easier the closer you'll come to it."

"Great…" Maya breathed, just as Lucas returned with the supplies. She gave him back the phone so he could get started. While he did this, she went about gathering Willow's gifts, returning them to their bag. Between that and the great basket from her co-workers at the restaurant, she'd have plenty of things to sort through, and she sort of wished she could bring them to the house already, to put them in the nursery, the kitchen, the bathroom, anywhere the items would be put to use. That wasn't likely to happen for a week at least, so she set the thought aside.

Once the bags had been collected, the only things that remained out of place were two books on the coffee table. She took them up as she sat on the other end of the large couch. The first was her baby sketchbook. She'd brought it down to show Willow her design for Zola's nursery walls, but then she'd never gotten the chance to show it to her. She turned the pages now, finding the sketch she'd done. She knew she could have delegated the task, finding some people with a steady hand to reproduce the thing, but she really just wanted to be part of this process, this gift to her friend. It wasn't like she couldn't do it now. She'd have help, she could pace herself and do fine. Now with Willow in the hospital, possibly for a few days… Wouldn't it be a nice thing to come home to, finding their daughter's place in their home had been prepared for her?

She put a pin in the thought as she kept leafing through the sketchbook. All these things she'd drawn and written, to immortalize moments, important turns in this journey of bringing this baby boy into the world… Blue hands on a belly… Contact… Lullabies… Nowhere, not on any one page, had she written his name. Wouldn't that be something she'd want to put in there? For some reason, she was surprised, like surely she would have put it somewhere by now, but… no. She recalled that book Melinda Friar had let her borrow, the names in the margin, the one name circled, the right name…

For a few months now she'd been going around with a name in her head, a name that was supposed to be his name, but… More and more, something about it just didn't feel right anymore, and she didn't understand why. More than that, she worried about what might happen if they couldn't decide, couldn't make up their minds. He needed a name, he… Alexander… She repeated it over and over in her head, but it was like every time she did this her certainty decreased again and again.

That was why she'd grabbed that second book along with the sketchbook earlier, before coming down again and finding her friend in distress. Hadn't they both scoured these pages already, Lucas and her? So many times… But then maybe the problem was that, all along, they'd been looking through this book more out of curiosity than anything, seeing as they'd already decided. Alexander for a boy, Marianne for a girl. And then he had been a boy, so Alexander it was. But now…

She closed her eyes for a moment, imagining those nine letters floating before her and then flying away, leaving her with a blank slate all over again. Letting out a breath, she opened her eyes again and opened the book, and she started to read through the various names, hoping that one of them would just go and jump out at her as The Right One. She briefly looked up from where she sat, to where Lucas sat on his knees, working to scrub at the stain as his mother instructed him from the phone, sitting on the ground near him. It was nearly midnight and there he was, doing everything in his power to attend to this situation when he probably wanted to get to sleep like the others. But she couldn't sleep, so he wasn't going to.

She hadn't been joking when she'd said they could name their son after him. Sure, the joke was easy, he'd be Junior, June-ior the Junebug… But beyond all that, who could there be out there worthier of having their name attached to the baby growing in her belly? They had pushed the name into a middle name slot, though mostly in order to preserve this sort of naming scheme the Friar men had had going on for a few generations now, bearing their fathers' first names as their middle names. They could always keep it that way, hold up the pattern, but call him by that middle name, or some diminutive of it. He'd be one of those people you'd get to know for a while, only to discover their name wasn't their first name.

Luke… Luke Friar… No, too short… Said Maya Hart… Lucky… Ha! Lucky Friar, give him a chance at least…

She let out a frustrated sigh, which drew Lucas' attention over to her. She just smiled, waving it off. On the phone, Melinda asked if anything was wrong, and Lucas repeated to her that it was nothing and got back to work.

Maya went back to reading through the name book, sometimes jumping through the alphabet instead of going through everything in order. She'd make little noises of surprise or amusement from time to time, learning what one name or another meant. She'd read one or another out to Lucas sometimes, and he'd have a similar reaction. Once Melinda had understood what they were up to, she'd started calling out recommendations from the phone.

"Alright, I think I have everything under control here, you're probably going to be turning in soon. Night, Mom, thanks for the help," Lucas finally told her before ending the call.

"Wow, she's going to tear you a new one for hanging up that fast," Maya chuckled.

"Sometimes it's worth it," he stood up and stepped back. "What do you think?" She looked over the top of the book to the part of the couch and floor he'd been working on. "It still needs to dry. And I'll probably have to give it another go in the morning," he scratched at the back of his neck as he inspected it, too.

"Looks great. Now, come here," she tapped the space on the couch next to her. He happily obliged, sitting and letting out a tired breath as she held up her arm to invite him to lean his head against her shoulder, which he did. "Better?" she smiled, leaning her head to the top of his.

"Always," he promised, reaching to set his hand over her bump, giving it a little rub that made her chuckle. "Does it tickle?" he asked.

"No, it's good, keep going," she insisted, so he happily obliged. "I think I've gotten to the point where I have to completely nix the whole Alexander situation. Is that okay with you?"

"We said you'd get to decide if he was a boy," Lucas pointed out.

"I know, but that doesn't mean you don't get a say in what our son's name will be," she pointed out.

"Alright, good point," he nodded, hand still trailing along the curve of her belly. "My parents picked my name out of a book like this. Yours, do you know?"

"Oh, I know," she laughed, which instantly made him look up at her, curious. "My mother told me that when she'd feel me moving, it would be like I was this little bee inside her, buzzing along. And there was this kids' show she used to watch, cartoon or something, and it was all about a bee called Maya. And that's how I ended up with my name."

"That explains so much," he teased, earning himself a light kick to the leg. "Any shows about a little boy sprout?"

"Not that I can think of, no, so back to the book, I guess," she propped up the thing on her knee and opened it again to where she'd stopped, somewhere in the letter N.

"How are you feeling now?" Lucas asked after a minute. "Do you feel calmer? Enough to go up to bed?" She set down the book again.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I can think I'll be fine, but then when I actually go and lie down, I'm scared I'll just start in with the nightmares again, or I'll just toss and turn the whole time."

"I'll be right there," he reminded her. "Right next to you."

"I know," she smiled. "Sometimes even that's not enough to keep me from going there."

"Is there anything else we can do? Anything more?"

"I…" she sighed, thinking for a moment as she set the name book aside. It thumped against her sketchbook and she looked down to it. She had a thought. "It's too late right now for us to do anything, but it might help if I knew we were going to do something, tomorrow."

"Like what?" Lucas asked. She opened the sketchbook, flipped the pages until she found the right one and showed it to him.

"We get Zola's nursery ready."

The next morning felt as though it arrived in a blink, but all in all both Maya and Lucas woke up fairly rested, all things considered. And now… Now they had a plan.

Alright, so first they had classes, most of them anyway. They couldn't skip those no matter how much they wanted to. The reason may have felt good to them, but their professors would not be likely to feel the same way. That didn't have to stop them completely. Throughout breaks, they could write one another, and Maya certainly took up the charge in calling up the troops for Operation Zola, knowing she'd find every last one of them ready and willing to help in what way they could offer.

At lunch time, rather than to treating themselves to a trip to the café, Maya and Lucas had gone by the now all too familiar hospital cafeteria to grab something before making their way up to Willow's room. Lucas could sense Maya was growing nervous all over again. It wasn't so bad as the night before, but it was enough that he casually reached for her hand and held it as they walked.

Maya didn't know what hit her the most, actually seeing Willow as she sat up in her bed awake and well, or seeing in her face that she understood exactly how Maya must have been feeling about this turn of events. She reached out her hand and Maya moved across the room to take it before carefully hugging her.

"I'm okay… We're okay…" Willow was quietly telling her, and Maya let out a breath, nodding along. When she pulled back, she carefully sat on the edge of the bed, where Willow briefly recounted the events of the previous day, after they'd been parted, all the way through the first half of this new day. She didn't hide the more difficult parts, knowing it wouldn't do Maya any good, but she also highlighted the good parts, the greatest of all being when she first got to hold the baby girl Lion was presently bringing over to meet her godmother.

"Hey…" Maya breathed, instantly holding out her arms to receive her. It was a weird sort of thought to realize she presently held two babies, one in her arms and one in her belly, but it only stayed with her for a moment as she soon found herself simply captivated by the presence of Zola Aileen Obi before her eyes. Of all the things she could have been offered to help pull back the worries she'd been having since the previous night, the newborn girl was like a miracle balm. All was well. "I was going to tell you not to freak out if you saw me crying, but I think we're already there," she laughed, eyes pooling with happy tears. The girl looked so very at peace in her arms, and Maya could have sat there for hours just holding her and watching her.

Eventually, she'd had to pass her to Lucas, letting him have a go, knowing he had been as anxious as she was for this moment, whether he said it or not. He walked over to the bed, and she could practically hear his heart smashing against his chest. This isn't even our baby, what's he going to be like when it is?

Oh, he'll definitely bawl his eyes out…

Lucas carefully picked up baby Zola from Maya's arms, carefully nestling her in his own arms as though he'd been holding babies his whole life. As they'd experienced before, it wasn't as though this was the first time they'd held babies or seen one another holding babies, but now, with their own getting closer and closer to being born, the feeling was becoming something else, something completely new and entirely more vibrant, more emotional.

"Well, hello," he smiled down to the girl blinking up at him. "It's good to finally meet you. Wait until you see how many people have been waiting to meet you, too. You're kind of famous."

By the time they'd finally handed Zola back to her parents and started on their way out of the hospital to get back to class, both of them were left feeling almost elated enough that they could have been flying. For as much as they'd worried the night before, now all was good, and the future looked bright. Exactly how long that feeling would hold out was anyone's guess, but they wouldn't worry themselves over that, not now.

Instead, what they had in mind was a plan for the days to come and the work ahead of them in readying the apartment for Willow and Lion's return and for Zola's arrival.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners