Choosing Forever

by Mary B. Moore

  “What happened?” Brett asked as he ran into the room and looked around like he expected someone to jump out. The others had run in after him and were all doing the same thing.

  “There was a snake!” Ebru shouted and pointed at the screen, before jumping up onto the chair and grabbing handfuls of hair. “There it is, there it is!” She screamed as she jumped up and down.

  “Jesus Christ,” Cole snapped as he moved forward with his hands out like he was going to catch a little kid who was jumping on the bed. “Stop it before you hurt yourself.”

  “Oh my God,” Maya started screaming, joining Ebru by jumping up onto her chair too. “Burn it to the ground, the snake won. Oh shit!”

  I was too big to jump up, but Simba chose that minute to brush against my leg and I about shit myself and screamed, making my fellow Snakes in the City viewers scream even louder.

  “For the love of all things Holy,” Ren snapped. “Why are you watching it if you can’t handle it?”

  “For the same reason that you watched It, and then started begging to leave the theater twenty-fucking-minutes after it started,” Maya yelled at him. “Oh, let’s not stop there, though,” she continued as she jumped down off her chair and walked up to him. “Oh, no! I had to drive the car to the door of the theater because you were too much of a big fat pussy and didn’t want to,” she held her hands in the air making air quotes, “come out of the lights! Don’t even get me started about the freak out you had when you saw the drain hole, or the red balloon at Wendy’s,” she added as she poked his chest.

  “What a dick,” Cole snorted, shaking his head.

  “Clown!” Ren shouted back at him. Now, Cole’s phobia wasn’t just anything period related, he also had the biggest fear of anything clown related too, so the smile dropped off his face and he started to fidget. “That’s what I thought,” Ren sneered.

  “Yeah, but unlike you ‘big fat pussy’,” Cole growled as he took a step toward Ren. “I didn’t put myself in a position to scream my ass off by going to watch the movie.”

  Pulling them out of the door, Brett’s dad pushed them back to where they’d been having the meeting, threatening to bang their heads together if they didn’t quit arguing.

  “What a bunch of babies,” Tom snorted and then screamed as the snake spat at Simon. “Holy shit, there’s a spitter!”

  The sound of footsteps running back toward where we were, had us all turning as Cole skidded around the door. He pulled up short when he saw that we were still watching the same thing. Sighing, he walked back out shouting, “Nah, it was only snakes they were talking about.”

  “Pervert,” Ebru muttered, shaking her head in disgust.

  Throughout all of this, I’d stayed quiet as the pains hit my back and stomach. I’d jumped when Simon first found the snake and it had set off the bloody Braxton Hicks contractions that had been an issue for weeks now.

  “You okay?” Maya asked quietly as she saw me wince again and rub where the pain was.

  Nodding, I shifted again. “Yeah, I just got carried away when he found it.”

  The pains started to get worse as we finished that episode and carried on into the next one. If I could have pulled myself out of that chair, I’d have tried to walk them off, but I was stuck and I didn’t want to cause a drama so I was trying to ride them out. That was until Simon discovered that he’d been standing in a trailer right next to one massive black Mamba and I screamed my ass off. Almost like out of a comedy, there was a rush of water from between my legs and the most brutal pain tried to kill me where I was sitting.

  “Will you quit screaming about…oh shit. Brett!” Cole yelled as he walked in and took in the shocked look on my face and the big dark wet patch on my dress.

  Running around the corner, Brett took a step toward me just as another pain hit. This one did what I physically couldn’t have done myself, as I propelled out of the chair and onto my knees on the floor. By this point, Maya was explaining to Tom that I hadn’t peed and that my waters had broken and Cole was still screaming.

  Falling to his knees beside me, Brett pushed my hair off my face and went to say something just as another hit, causing another scream. Fin suddenly appeared beside us and went into medical mode.

  “How far apart are they?”

  “Not far,” Maya answered for me as I couldn’t get my brain to decide if it wanted me to talk in French, English or a mixture of both languages. Instead, I focused on trying to breathe, that I could do!

  “Call an ambulance!” Tom yelled at the room, getting a response from Cole. Fin started taking my pulse and giving orders to move me, each pause between words punctuated by the sound of a number being dialed on a phone.

  “It says it’s not available,” Cole yelled as he shook his phone. “What the fuck kind of emergency service isn’t available?” He shouted at his phone as he shook it and tried again.

  “We’re gonna have to move her to my office,” Fin told Brett, holding his hands out to help as Brett lifted up off the floor with me in his arms. How my husband managed to find the strength I didn’t know, but the next gush of water left me at that moment.

  I switched off to what was being said around me and focused on panting through the next explosion in my stomach. I wasn’t a wimp when it came to pain, but holy shit this was torture. Turning my head into Brett’s chest, I bit down and screamed as I tried to get through it. I’d only intended on biting on his sweater, but I must have caught skin because he screamed and almost dropped me.

  “Jesus Christ, I think she took the nipple,” he yelled as he ran toward the building where Fin had some of his patients. A majority of his work took place on the Safari Park itself, but there were some cases that needed more monitoring so he brought them here.

  The next moment, I was laid out on a metal table and there was a bright light shining on me.

  “I am not having my son in a veterinary off…” I cut off as I screamed when the next contraction hit.

  Leaning over me, Brett tried to calm me as he rubbed his chest where I’d bitten moments earlier. “We don’t have time, baby. It’s okay,” he tried to reassure me as he looked nervously around the room. “Is this place sterile?”

  Glaring at him, Fin ordered him to lift me up as he put a pad underneath me. “This place is more sterile than a car,” he said as he continued moving around. “Why don’t you put some music on or something? It might distract her.”

  Nodding my head frantically at Brett, I saw him looking around the room for a radio. “Music good,” I panted out, my head falling back onto the table.

  Feeling him leave my side, I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I should have expected it, I really should have, but when the music filled the room it was far from relaxing as Johnny Cash started singing about the Ring of Fire. “My ring is on fire!” I screamed in response.

  “Shit, shit…” Brett panicked as the sound of various music stations being skipped past came out of the speakers. The next song he stopped on was the end of a Take That song, but whatever reprieve we’d been given ended when Salt n Peppa’s Push It came on.

  “Fucking hell,” Fin muttered as I screamed out threats at Brett.

  “I will cut your balls off and shove them up your…” I wailed, breaking off as Maya knocked on the door and stuck her head around it.

  “Um, can I come in?” Nodding at her, Brett took a second to compose himself. He was sweating almost as hard as I was now and kept rubbing his nipple and then looking around the room. Following where he was looking, I saw some cages and groaned. “How’s it looking?” She asked Fin who had called his nurse in from wherever she’d been before that. At least, I hoped the older lady in the scrubs was a nurse and not just a random passerby?

  “I was just about to check,” he started, getting cut off by Brett.

  “Oh no,” he yelled storming back over. “You are not looking at my wife’s vagina!”

  “How else do you suppose I help her give birth?” Fin replied looking confused as
the old woman snorted beside him.

  Looking torn, Brett stormed out of the room yelling at whomever was out there to try for an ambulance again.

  Maya came up to join me at the head of the table as Fin and scrub woman washed up at the sinks and walked back over.

  “Now,” Fin stuttered nervously, looking a bit pale. “We’re just going to have a look while we wait for the ambulance to arrive. Okay?” Nodding frantically at him, I tried not to be embarrassed as he and the lady got to work. “I should probably introduce Diana,” he said quickly as she helped him, mentioning the name of a woman that I remembered as definitely being a veterinary nurse from his stories. “Oh shit…” he broke off and looked at Maya wide eyed.

  Walking warily down to the end of the table, Maya swore and then picked up her phone. As the next pain hit, I heard Tony’s voice in the room and opened my eyes. Not seeing him, I looked over at Maya and that’s when I realized that she’d FaceTime’d him on her phone.

  “Hey, Tone!” She tried to sound calm and cheerful, but it came out squeakily panicked.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of Eb,” he whined just as a screaming baby started up in the background. “We’re going to get in the car and…”

  “Yeah, yeah, good,” she cut in. “We need the maternity bag that we packed for Sabine.”

  “What? Why?” He asked sounding confused. Whether she moved or I moved, I wasn’t sure, but the next sounds out of the phone was a thud and the sound of screaming.

  “Oops,” Maya giggled, moving so that whatever he’d seen on his screen wasn’t there anymore. At this point in time, with my legs wide open, I had no doubt whatsoever that he’d just caught a screen full of my vagina which felt like it had had acid poured on it and that a tree trunk was trying to make its way out of it.

  “Holy shit, holleeee shit. My eyes!” I finally lost my shit at him when he started wailing louder than the infant in the room with him, carrying on about taco’s or whatever it was that he wanted.

  “I’m having a fucking baby,” I yelled. “I don’t care about what you want to eat. Just bring the bag…owww!” I broke off yelling as a nuclear bomb went off down there.

  There was a moment of screaming, mainly me, but some of them Fin’s as I kicked out and caught him in the groin, and then Tony came back over the phone. “Girl, I don’t eat taco’s,” he explained sounding calm. “But you are gonna need a cat doctor after that!”

  “Well, we’re in a veterinary office,” Maya shrugged.

  “I don’t have a cat, connard,” I snapped. “It’s a dog. I don’t want a cat!”

  “No, you’re gonna need to reconstruct your cat after that,” he explained. There was a brief moment of heavenly silence from him before he asked, “Why are y’all in a veterinary office?” Fin picked himself up from wherever he’d landed when I’d kicked him in the crotch at that moment and gave a quick wave in Maya’s direction. “Fin, hey!” Tony gushed. “Wait, can you reconstruct her kitty? I mean, I’ve been present at three births and I don’t think I’ve ever seen…”

  Picking up the closest thing to me, which happened to be a pair of surgical scissors, I went to throw them in Maya’s direction, but Nurse Diana caught my hand and took them off me before I could actually do it. “Maybe get daddy?” she suggested to Maya who was staring at me wide eyed and edging toward the door now.

  The next pain hit and when I opened my eyes again, Brett was looking at me nervously. “T’es un salaud,” I sneered at him.

  “She said you’re a bastard,” Fin translated, unhelpfully to Brett, but helpfully for me.

  Taking a step back, his arm hit the radio behind him and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back filled the room just as I got the overwhelming need to push and followed what my body was telling me to do, shrieking my head off yet again as I did it.

  “Oh shit,” Brett gasped and stumbled to the side, holding onto a plastic incubator type thing. The movement woke up whatever had slept through me screaming and it started to make noises.

  “Bugger,” Fin muttered, walking over. “I can’t do anything just now. You’ll have to take it out and go calm her down,” he instructed Brett, turning back to where this baby was trying to savage my poor vagina.

  Never had a birth been as painful as this. Never had a baby caused so much pain. And never ever was I doing this again.

  Brett

  “You can’t be serious,” I whispered, looking down at the baby orange monkey in front of me.

  ‘Yes, he is,” the nurse helping Fin out snapped, nodding toward it. “It’s a baby girl and an Orangutan. She’s only a couple of weeks old and was rejected by her mother. Now, hold her close to your chest and you’ll find a bottle for her in the room next door. I was making it when Fin called me in here.”

  Stumbling out of the room, I stopped and stared at all of the members of my family who were waiting for news on the baby. One by one, their eyes dropped to the baby in my arms and their mouths dropped open.

  Looking back down, I saw the Orangutan looking at them before it put its finger in its mouth and made a squeaking noise.

  “Don’t stare,” Gramps whispered loudly to Tom and Cole, who were sitting either side of him. “Your dad looked exactly the same when he was born. He grew out of it.”

  “Where’s the ambulance?” I demanded. Their emergency services couldn’t be down for this long.

  “It’s still not working,” Cole waved his phone in front of me, allowing me to see the number that he’d been repeatedly trying to call.

  “Dickhead,” I seethed lunging for him and being caught by Dad just in time. “It’s 999 here, not 9-fucking-11!” I bellowed in his face.

  “Ah, I’ll just try that one then,” he replied quietly and dialed the right number. His eyes flicked nervously in my direction as the call was answered and he started whispering into the phone.

  The sound of I want to Break Free by Queen came from the room that I’d just left, and Sabine started screaming over it. Fin’s panicked voice followed, but I couldn’t work out what he was saying to her as he skipped through the channels on the radio. Unfortunately, the one he stopped on was Like a Virgin and Sabine’s bellow and the rapid French that followed it almost had me pitying the poor bastard.

  “I don’t get it,” Tom asked, still staring at the baby in my arms. “Is it twins? Holy shit, there’s gonna be two that look like that?” He gestured to her and then nervously looked at the glare on my face. “No offense!”

  Making a quick decision, I passed the baby to Mom and passed on the instructions that I’d been given as I scrubbed my arms in the sink next to the door. “Bottle’s on the side in that room there,” I nodded at the door with my head. “Keep her warm.”

  Opening the door, I walked into pandemonium and a sight of Sabine’s vagina that I really never ever wanted to see.

  “Where have you been?” She wailed as she started making pushing noises and went dark purple in her face.

  “Um,” I looked around the room, literally anywhere than at the gaping supernova that her vagina had turned into. Before I could come up with the words that had just disappeared when I saw what her cooch had turned into, a head full of hair appeared out of her great abdominal void. “Oh shit,” I croaked, reaching out to find something to hold onto as the room started to spin. Unfortunately, I chose the incubator fish tank like thing that the baby Orangutan had been in which was on wheels. Down I went as it went rolling across the room, hitting my head on the counter. And then everything went black.

  While I was out cold, Sabine pushed my son out into the world, apparently screaming and cursing the whole time as Disco Inferno by The Trammps played on the radio. Every time they said to ‘burn baby burn’ she’d scream that it was fucking burning and then launch into French insults. Poor Fin was now sitting with an ice pack on his crotch and I was holding my son, Jack. We’d discussed calling him Brett Junior, but then it would be shortened to BJ and there’s was no way I could do that to the poor kid. Hadn’t I suffe
red enough with my own initials?

  Just as Jack was wrapped up and the worst was over, the ambulance arrived. Fucking figures! Walking out into the waiting room as the paramedics looked over Sabine, I introduced my son to my family.

  Looking at my mom who was now holding a fast-asleep baby Orangutan, Tom looked back at baby Jack and gave a big sigh of relief. “Thank fuck for that. At least this one looks normal.”

  “It’s a fucking monkey,” I hissed at him, nodding toward Mom. “This is a baby!”

  “She gave birth to a monkey?” He gasped looking horrified. “How was that even possible?”

  Deciding that I wasn’t going to let him ruin the moment for me and knowing that he’d realize his stupidity soon enough, I walked over to the rest of my family. The first one to speak up after they looked him over was Cole.