I patted Danny’s back. “That was good. See? Not so hard.”
I watched Von take Danny’s hand with a wary expression, as if he expected to be shanked at any moment. “Cheers, Danny.”
Danny nodded once. The corners of his mouth pulled downward, and his eyebrows furrowed. As if catching us making fun of him, he glared at me and stomped up the stairs after toeing off his boots.
Von’s head twisted to track his brother’s steps until they disappeared. “What was that about?”
“He’s trying to be nicer, so the babies aren’t afraid of him. It might take a while to get him up to snuff.”
“I’ll say. I don’t think Danny’s wished me a happy birthday since we were kids.” Then Von’s gaze sharpened when he remembered why he was pissed. “Why’d you run away?”
“Can’t actually run all that far in my condition.” When my dodge did nothing to get me out of this, I confessed my nerves. “Look, I know I suck at this whole birthday thing. Let me take you shopping, and you can pick something out for yourself.”
Von looked baffled, his hand on his forehead as he shook his head. “Why would you think I wouldn’t like your gift? It’s brilliant! I love it.”
“I can do better, I... What?” I stopped wringing my hands.
“It’s the thing I jokingly ask for every year, but no one’s ever gone to such effort to make me smile. You built me a roller coaster! How could I not love it? What I don’t love is that you got scared and ran, leaving me to go to my own personal amusement park alone. We’re meant to go together to these things, yeah?” He proffered his elbow to me, as usual letting me off too easily.
It had taken me forever to find enough kits I could splice together with wooden train tracks and race tracks to make a miniature roller coaster. The car had been hardest to paint. Trying to fit “The Half-Vamp at Full-Speed” on a small roller coaster car in red is harder than it sounds. Despite my best efforts, I was pretty sure it looked like a child put it all together. “You don’t have to be this cool about it. It’s not as good as a concealed weapon, an actual weapon or a sentimental baby book gift.”
“All those things make me feel thirty. Your gift made me feel ten – a glorious ten. Exactly what I needed today. Come play and be completely juvenile with me.”
It was the best offer I’d gotten in ages, so I held tight to Von and took him up on being young together.
Twenty-Five.
One Reap Too Many
The next few weeks of reaping with Von and Boston felt like two years, but somehow they passed without me losing my self-control and giving in when Von asked me daily if I’d marry him. At any given point in the day, it was a tossup. Of course I wanted to marry him, but I was still nervous he’d bail. It somehow felt infinitely worse to have a husband walk out than a boyfriend, which I was still reticent to call him.
At every place we reaped – hospitals, fairs, nursing homes, hospices – he announced to nearly every stranger we passed that I was carrying his baby. “Excuse me, could you hold the door? That’s my baby she’s carrying. It’s a girl. We’re having a little girl together. We were best friends first, but now we’re mad for each other.” Then there was the one that made me super popular: “Could you aim your cigarette the other way, mate? My girlfriend’s pregnant with my child. I’m going to be a father soon. Isn’t she lovely?” And of course, the one that made me chuckle: “Sorry, is this meal safe for pregnant women? I ask because my girlfriend is pregnant. That’s right, with my child. We’re having a baby girl. Do you want to see pictures of the sonogram? Here, I just got it laminated.”
I jokingly told him that I should just wear a sandwich board that said “Von’s Sperm Rocked my Womb” to save him the trouble. The agreeable gleam in his eyes made me hope he realized I was kidding.
Boston started to come out of his funk in bits and pieces, though he clung to my hand as if I was his mama when his bad moments hit. I could always tell when he was down. He glued his sweaty hand to mine and only answered in grunts. I think it was the fact that we’d both recently buried a family member that made him feel safe around me.
“You alright, big brother?” I asked Boston, who always dimpled when I called him that. He had one whole year on me, but it was just enough for him to finally feel like the big one instead of the youngest goofball.
We strolled through the hospital at a leisurely pace, reaping to store up hearts for my maternity leave and Mariang’s. Boston squeezed my hand and forced half a smile. “Yeah, I’m okay. How’s my niece?”
“She’s getting tired. One more, and we’re done for the day.”
“Look at you, learning to pace yourself. I daresay you’re growing up.”
I shrugged. “Better late than never.”
Philip had begged me to stop reaping after four souls before I stopped seeing him in my dreams. Von had replaced Philip after our reunion kiss that we reinvented every night, but Philip’s warning stuck in my mind. He’d insisted the baby couldn’t handle more than that, and she’d start feeling the cold poison of the reaps the closer she got to birth, due to the thinning placenta. He’d been so insistent that I consented. Also, Mariang and I only had to do two reaps between the two of us per day, so me doing four by myself was more than enough to buy us extra time off on the back end. I knew Philip’s warnings were just a dream, but my dreams with Philip had felt so real. It didn’t sit right ignoring his pleas for me to take it easy.
Yup, I was crazy. I half expected David Duchovny to show up in my next dream, tell me to wear a tinfoil hat, and hold his hand while we waited for daylight to save us from the aliens. If only all forms of crazy were accompanied by David Duchovny.
There was a woman with brown hair streaked with sporadic strands of gray, and bags under her eyes. She was sitting in the hallway outside a room, staring at the door as if willing it to pop open. It was the face of needing good news, but knowing it would always be just out of reach. I knew that expression well.
I waited until the doctor came out, and Boston pulled a slight bit from him so I could sneak past without anyone caring. The doctor stood in the hallway for the final blow while I slipped into the hospital room to reap the woman’s husband. It was hard not to feel like death was inevitable, and people would always die alone. The man’s breathing was evening out, and I guessed that he’d just been sedated. His wrinkled eyelids were closed as if to shut out all the doctor bills and things that tore at him in his final moments. I reaped him quickly. Or, that was the intent, anyway.
The second his corroding soul leapt into me, September started freaking out. It was something akin to a giant octopus breakdancing in my uterus, making me twitch and flinch as I tried to put one foot in front of the other to get to my Duwendes, who were watching the door. “Von!” I cried out when the simple act of walking felt like a risk. September was fighting something inside of me, making my heart race and my palms sweat when I could no longer escape the fact that something was horribly wrong.
Von rushed in and took the soul from me with a simple brush of my elbow, calming both me and September down significantly. “What’s wrong?”
I slumped against the wall, bracing myself with relief. The lingering pain was an indicator that something wasn’t quite right. My eyebrows pushed together in concern. “I think it’s time to go home. That last one hurt the baby somehow.”
Von let out a steady stream of swearing. He slowly led me out of the room and down the hall toward the parking structure. “Steady now. Let me get a wheelchair.”
I shook my head, gripping my stomach as September rolled in my uterus, making my spine twinge uncomfortably. My face and my back contorted as I gripped Von and Boston, closing my mouth through a scream. “Home! Let’s go back to the mansion so I can lie down.”
Von clicked his fingers for Boston to grab a wheelchair, and the two lowered me down into it as if I was ninety years old and needed help with such arduous tasks as sitting. The sucky part? I actually did need help. We were just beginning
the last month of the pregnancy, and while I couldn’t wait to meet September, it seemed she was getting impatient to meet me, as well. There was precious little room in my belly for her anymore, and everything felt stuffed too tight with no breathing room.
I kept my head down in embarrassment, unwilling to admit to myself, much less the world, that I needed this much help just to get to my friggin’ car. When we didn’t go toward the parking garage but to the maternity ward, I stiffened. “Why are we in here? If it’s all the same to you guys, I’d love to go home.” I looked up at Von, who was pushing the wheelchair. It wasn’t until I saw his clenched jaw that I realized he was scared. “Von, I’m okay. Really. It was one reap too many, is all. I just need to lay down.”
“Humor me. We’re in the hospital. Why not pop in and have a doctor give you a look?”
I sunk in the chair, mortified I couldn’t get through a whole day of work without incident. I heard Boston murmuring to Ezra on the phone and groaned. “You can’t call Ezra about the little stuff, Boston. He’ll overreact, and he doesn’t need the stress.”
Boston hung up and reached for my shoulder, cupping it clumsily, like a guy who didn’t know how a woman should be touched at all. He was a sweet kind of oaf. “I tend to go a trifle deaf when you start to say daft things, sis. You should speak up next time.”
Something shifted in me, and my stomach became hard, my insides spiking with a sudden dose of pain. I grabbed my stomach and bit my lip through a bleat of distress. “Oh! Okay, yeah. That wasn’t good.”
Von bolted through the hallways we’d been down so many times before, but this time with renewed purpose and a heavy dose of dread. “It’s alright, love. I’ve got you.”
“Squeeze my hand,” Boston volunteered as he jogged alongside the wheelchair.
He probably wished he hadn’t offered that when the next ripple of spontaneous pain hit me a handful of minutes later. Boston winced through my cry of pain and fear. Then he let out a panicked whimper when he saw my belly tremble and harden ominously through my fitted lavender shirt that stretched over my sizeable bump. “How many minutes was that between contractions?” Boston asked in a pinched voice to Von.
“Only three. How are they so quick? They’re supposed to start out slow according to the books. I knew we shouldn’t have reaped today!”
“I’m not in labor,” I insisted, half from fear-laced denial and half from knowing it couldn’t be contractions. “It’s too early still. The baby’s not ready yet. It’s probably just false labor.” My palms were clammy, and I couldn’t gather in a full breath that calmed me in any way.
Von ignored me and drove the chair right up to triage, checking us in with no flourish. “We need to see a doctor straightaway. My wife is in labor!” he all but shouted when his hand shook while he tried to fill out my information.
“I can do that, mate. Go on in.” Boston took over filling out my paperwork, no doubt leaving half the information blank.
I was wheeled in and given a gown that Von and the nurses helped me into after I shooed Boston out of the room. I was promptly hooked up to a heart rate monitor, an IV and a fetal imaging monitor. The machines beeped through my next seven contractions, reminding me that I was in a hospital, and that ready or not, this was happening. “Go out with Boston,” I told Von when I saw the fear in his face. He didn’t want to be here anymore than I did. I didn’t have a choice, but Von did. “Go call Ollie. If the baby’s really coming, Ezra can’t be here. I’ll have them call you in after the baby comes.”
The moment Von left me with the nurse, I broke down into horrible sobs that scared me. I wasn’t ready to give birth yet. I still felt like a kid myself.
The nurse with short brown, curly hair looked tranquil while I vacillated on the edge of a full-throttle freak-out. “Okay, it’s alright. Let’s focus on getting your heart rate down. Try to breathe.” The nurse read the machines, handing me a tissue to stem the unending flow of my tears. I’d sent Von away, and he’d gone. I thought I’d muscled past the maximum amount of heartbreak, but apparently there was a whole level of crap beneath the bottom of the trough for me to wade through.
“Now, now. Don’t start the party without me.” Von barreled back through the door, his sleeves rolled as if gearing up to wrestle a bear.
I looked up, and if my vision had the photo ability to add a dreamy haze and halo on a man, it would’ve done so right then. “I can’t believe you left me!” I sobbed into my tissue.
Von tilted his head at me and tsked. “You told me to go call Ollie and keep Ezra away. And I think we’ve established that I’m not going anywhere. Even when you send me away, I’m not leaving you, Peach.”
My lower lip couldn’t stop quivering, and my tears flowed so fast that I could scarcely see the halo I’d painted on him, but it was there. Dusty and tarnished, sure, but Von was my angel in that moment, staying with me when I was scared, and life was too dangerous to go through alone. “You don’t want to be here for this. It’s nothing but screaming. I don’t even want to be here for this part. Take your Get Out of Jail Free card and run.”
Von sat me up and climbed into the hospital bed behind me, encircling my trembling body with his arms. Then he hooked his legs on either side of me so I was completely wrapped in Von. He moved my hair over my shoulder and kissed the nape of my neck. “I’m exactly where I want to be. I haven’t been to a concert in a long time. I rather miss the screaming and head-banging.” His chest was firm against my back, all ten of his fingers lacing through mine so that when the next contraction hit, he took the brunt of my agony. I tried to breathe through the ripping sensation that vibrated through me. After half an hour of that, the nurse warned me that if my heart rate didn’t even out, they’d have to deliver the baby right then and there.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confessed to Von when the contraction passed. “I don’t know how to tell the difference between a baby who needs something and a kid who’s just being a brat. I don’t know when they’re supposed to potty train. I don’t know how to potty train a kid! I don’t know if I’m supposed to sleep in the bed with the baby or if she’s supposed to have her own space. In her room or ours? I don’t know what I’m doing!”
Von kissed my cheek and rocked me forward and back as he rubbed my belly. “September will sleep in the bassinet in our bedroom until she’s big enough to be moved to her own room. And we’ll figure out toilet training when it comes, which won’t be for like, two years. I’ll be here for every nappy, every midnight feeding – all of it. I love you, and I’m not going anywhere.” He shifted behind me and pulled out his phone. “Bos, get on in here, mate. We can’t get her heart rate steady.”
Boston thundered through the door a minute later in similar fashion to Von – sleeves rolled, hair a mess and a wild determination about him that told me he wasn’t taking crap from no baby. He stomped over to me and put one hand on my belly and the other on my forehead, pulling in a steady thrum that lessened my anxiety and actually let me breathe in full, long drags that felt restful.
“Okay, Bos. That’s enough for now. We can’t have her passing out.”
The nurse blinked at the machines and at us in confusion. “Well, that seemed to work. You must have something good up your sleeves. I wish I could get all my patients to calm down like that.”
“It’s a gift,” Boston mumbled. He kept his hands on me, lessening my tears to only a few that trickled down in pitters and patters as my anxiety ebbed. “That’s the way, sis. Just breathe. September’s not ready to meet us yet.”
Slowly – too slow for my liking – the contractions came to a stop. Von didn’t let go of me the whole time. Even though I knew both of us wanted to run, we stayed fused together, with him as my support even after it was clear September wasn’t going to make an appearance today.
I was kept for observation that night, and Von only left the hospital bed to bring me food and water. Boston made himself useful conning us a warmer blanket from the cute nurse
in the drafty ward.
Von and I didn’t make love in our dream; I was too scared. Instead we kissed slowly and softly for hours, making plans for our daughter, and promising each other things that I prayed would hold in the daylight.
Twenty-Six.
All our Lives
When I awoke the next morning, Danny was in Boston’s chair. His arms were crossed over his chest as he sat back, watching me all curled up in Von’s arms in the narrow hospital bed. “You’re not Boston,” I whispered by way of a greeting.
“He’s with Mariang. She sent me here to stay with you. She came by with me in the night to check on you, but you were asleep. Boston drove her home so they could both get some rest.” Danny leaned forward in his seat. “Are you alright, then? No baby yet?”
“No baby yet. False, but very convincing labor.”
Danny tapped his heart. “You scared me, kid. Ezra’s in a right state. I have to phone him every few hours, or he’ll come up here himself, and if you’re ready to pop, that’s not really best.”
“Makes sense. Sorry I scared you.”
“What did it?”
“That last reap sent me over the edge. I felt September freaking out, twisting and turning to get away from the cold. It was awful.”
Danny cut the flat of his hand through the air with a note of finality. “You’re done working. You’re officially on maternity leave.”
“I can handle it, but maybe I’ll dial back to two a day or something.”
“Mariang’s healthy, and you’ve got a month stored up already between the two of you. As soon as Sombi gets the last of the stone, you’ll only have to reap once a day.” He nodded, as if it was already settled. “You’re done working. I won’t risk my niece like that.”
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