March 9th 2023

Chapter 68
We Grow Into A Family

Being the only person to know someone's secret in a given setting came with some perks, or so Maya would claim. For one week or so, she had valiantly kept the secret of Stella and her own baby bird on the way. Day by day, she'd been visited by her as she shared a new discovery, or experience, or question regarding her pregnancy, and it made her former teacher smile every time.

Then, one day, she came with a different kind of request. She had just told her parents and her sisters about the baby the night before, not by design but by a slip of the tongue that had forced her hand. She wasn't too upset over it, couldn't be with how everyone had reacted - and she had pictures to share - but now it left her in a position where she really wanted to do this one thing, and she wanted Maya's opinion and assistance. She wanted to tell Phoebe, and she wanted to come up with a genuine plan, a reveal instead of a slip up. She could not have found a better partner in this endeavor.

So, they'd worked it all out, and they were both so excited to put this plan in motion the very next morning. They made their way to Phoebe's home, on the pretext of bringing a few spur of the moment gifts for little Myles Russell and his soon-to-be born baby brother. Even though they knew she still had about three weeks to go, she looked like she could genuinely pop at any second, and by the expression on her face, they'd say she thought so, too. The fact that she had a very energetic toddler to contend with on top of everything didn't help, so it was a good thing that it was Saturday and his Aunt Desi was home from school and available to play with him.

As it turned out, there was even better news on the horizon: Khalil was coming home. If all went well, he would still be there when the baby was born, but there was a slim chance that he wouldn't, and they could see that this possibility weighed on Phoebe. She so desperately wanted and needed for her husband to be there with her when their son was born that she'd gotten to a point where the mere thought that he might not be would start her crying. And if that wasn't enough, well, sometimes it made her clumsy as she would be back in high school, and that made her afraid that she'd end up getting the baby hurt, too, and she did not need that extra bit of stress.

"I'm sorry, I'm being so weird right now," Phoebe pinched the bridge of her nose, trying not to cry.

"No, hey, don't worry about it," Maya assured her, moving to sit closer to her, embracing her. Stella came and did the same on the other side. "You worry about what you need to worry about. We've got you," she promised, and Stella nodded.

Maya exchanged a look with her, across the oblivious Phoebe, asking with her eyes whether she wanted to do her thing now or wait. Stella quickly smiled, letting her know: she wanted this to be the moment. What better way to lift her best friend's spirits, right?

"Oh..." Phoebe spoke up, blinking.

"What?" Stella asked, as she and Maya turned their focus back on their host.

"No... No, no, no, not now..." Phoebe continued as though she hadn't heard a thing and she was still stuck in her own thoughts. But then it didn't take long for them, or at least for Maya at first, to figure out what might have been troubling her.

"Is it starting?" she asked, and Stella's eyes widened.

"Wait, you mean..."

"I think so... I don't know... Maybe it's just me, panicking, and..." Her words cut off short under the press of new sensations. "What if it's really..." she looked helplessly over to Maya, who quickly reached for her phone.

"I'll call Nadine, alright? No one better for this," she spoke with reassurance in her voice. Over time, the short age difference between her and some of her first ever students had blurred the authority line to next to nothing, but just now both young women looked at her like she was their teacher again and knew better how to cope with anything.

It didn't take long for Nadine to recommend they direct themselves to the hospital, and so they were on. Desi was alerted and she saw to her nephew as they got Phoebe in the car with her hospital bags, and then they all took off. The whole way as they went, even as it felt more and more certain that Baby Russell number two was on his way, all Phoebe could think about was Khalil, and how he was so close and so not, how he might miss the birth. It was getting to be that she was not fully aware of being in labor, which might have been helpful for the pain, but beyond that...

"We'll get him there, okay?" Stella chimed in. "We'll do everything we can, and we'll get him there."

"You will?" Phoebe breathed, eyes tearful and childlike.

"Yeah, of course," Stella smiled at her. "I'll get François to pick him up."

"Call Lucas, too," Maya called from the driver's seat. She wasn't going to say it aloud and ruin Stella's stalled announcement, but she had this notion of the two young men, both of them about to be fathers - if several months apart - and it felt like the reasonable thing to add an extra layer of... calm under pressure.

To hear Lucas tell the tale later on, it might have been a good call. François Lejeune was not the most confident driver on his best day, so adding urgency to the mix was by no means a sound option. There were hours on the road ahead of them, getting to and from their pickup point, and there was no telling how long the labor would last before it came to its natural conclusion. None of them, not even Khalil, would want Phoebe to go through a minute of it more than she needed to, even for this, so they had to be as quick but safe as possible.

Truth be told Lucas had worried that even he wouldn't be up to the task, that he'd get in his own head with this drive and there he'd be confronted with nothing but images of his mother lying dead in the hospital or the wreck of his parents' car from the pictures that he'd been shown later on.

As it turned out though, the task, the goal, all of it worked not to awaken his fears but to soothe them. He accomplished what he'd set out to do, retrieving and escorting the expecting father in as prompt of a time as one ever could. He'd spent the first stretch of that drive alone with The Young Frank, not knowing at first why he had been selected over him to drive - aside from his overall insecurities - but it didn't take long for him to piece it together. He didn't let him know that he knew, but it helped to realign his plan for the day.

And then once he reached Khalil, oh... He knew what was on the line, and Lucas had to talk him out of taking the wheel himself, pointing out exactly why it had to be the other way around. There was no time to argue, so off they went. Khalil had already been keeping himself updated through his little sister, so he knew that things were progressing well, and the baby was not yet born. By the time they were nearing the hospital, he looked like he could have thrown the door open, jumped out, and sprinted the rest of the way. Thankfully, he didn't do that, and they pulled up to the main entrance before he could do that.

"Go with him, I'll park," Lucas told François.

"Oui... Yes, I will do that."

Lucas imagined them heading in together, nervous bundles the both of them. By virtue of their wife and fiancée being best friends, the two of them had been growing as friends, too, and it wasn't that they were mismatched, but it definitely felt a bit strange to see them together sometimes, the soldier and the singer. In times like these, they could well have been brothers.

Soon, he'd find how close of a thing it was, as though the new Russell had just been waiting for his father to arrive. Even as Lucas had been parking, Khalil had made it to his wife's side, and by the time he'd made it into the hospital, the younger man was hearing the newborn cries of the son who would bear his name.

"We haven't decided yet if he'll be Junior... or KJ... Not Khal, that's a bit too... Game of Thrones-y," Phoebe reflected when the Friars first came to meet the baby a few hours later.

"You'll figure it out," Maya smiled, looking at the little one bundled in her arms. This feeling really never got old, holding a student's child...

"Thank you so much, for what you did today, I..." Phoebe shook her head. She was much more calm than she'd been that morning at the house, and that might have been the childbirth of it all, but to Maya it felt a lot more like what she was being thanked for, her and Lucas both. They had acted, along with Stella and François, to ensure that all would go well, taking away all her worries.

"We're only glad we could help," Maya nodded at her, turning to Stella where she sat, on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder with the new mom. It had been Phoebe's wish, and who were they to deny her, right? As for Stella, she'd been quietly carrying the secret she'd meant to reveal all day long, and she seemed unsure what to do about it. Maya caught her eye, tried to suggest as discreetly as she could for her to take her moment and go for it.

"What's going on?" Phoebe asked, perfectly positioned as she was to notice the silent exchange. Stella opened her mouth to speak, looked to her colleague, hesitant only for a moment before turning back to her best friend. All it took was one look, one very loaded smile, and when Phoebe's jaw dropped, they knew that she'd figured it out. "You're kidding..." she breathed, instantly forcing her mouth shut to retain herself from squealing in the presence of her sleeping baby boy.

"What's up?" Khalil asked, the only one in the room not to have pieced it together. But then his wife was moving to hug Stella, and it didn't take very long after that before he got it. He laughed and looked to François, and the quiet young man nodded, so Khalil went and hugged him, too, congratulating him.

"I can't believe we're going to be moms together, well, he's going to be less of a baby by the time you... Oh, but that's okay, that's great, I'll be able to help you! You'll be even less of a klutz than I was," Phoebe reflected, happy tears everywhere and unable to completely stop holding her best friend, who was also crying and smiling with her. It was just what she'd hoped to hear.

When Lucas and Maya left the two couples together, Stella was holding baby Khalil, sitting with Phoebe still. They walked off after this long and unexpected day, reminiscing when they had gotten to become parents alongside their friends, too. In their case it had been simultaneous, of course, with Megan Orlando and the Friar triplets born all of a week apart, but it was the feelings they remembered, the feelings of going through this huge thing with people who meant so much to them... They couldn't have wanted anything better for them.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners