Visualizations
Sheila is calm. Soul-deep calm, and all of her cool indifference to the situation should make Ash feel better but he's staring at her as if he's waiting for her to explode.
She ignores him, taking slow, heavy steps around the apartment, preparing her suitcase, pausing to hunch over and squeeze the back of a chair as a contraction overcomes her self-control.
Ash is half-awake, stumbling over discarded clothing and trying to find his wallet. "Are you sure this is for real?"
He takes one look into her pale face, her furrowed brow, the combination of pain and anger etched on her features, holding a nursing bra and a set of maternity pajamas in her hands.
Oh yeah, this is the real thing.
***
"Now this is the life, baby!" Ash declares. He's parked himself in a Barca-Lounger at the far end of the room and found the Lions game on her small overhead tv. He addresses the nurse who'd just finished taking Sheila's blood pressure. "Hey, does this get ESPN?"
"Ash," his wife hisses. He's embarrassing her, but that embarrassment is a good distraction; they both know it.
He smirks insufferably, and she snarls, trying to turn over in her hospital gown without revealing her bare rump. He finally gets up to help her, and though she tries to fight off his touch, though she's still mad at him, the typical spark that lies between them flamed to life, to soothe them both.
"You're gonna be okay," Ash tells her. "I promise."
Sheila shakes her head and relaxes against the mattress.
***
By the middle of the night the pains have worsened; she's a lump of sweat against the mattress, clutching ineffectively at his right hand just above the amputation.
Ash's mood changes as the seriousness of the situation settles in. He badgers nurses for more help, and when they don't give it he grows sharply critical of their attempts at administering aid.
"Fuck this. You should've squatted in the tub," Ash growls. Sheila stops panting for a moment and bursts out laughing at his righteous anger.
He pouts but refuses to let go of her hand.
***
There's something horrible about watching her suffer. He can detach himself from the pain of others, especially those foolhardy enough to follow him, but not living women, not the woman he loves. It brings him back to the torture of convincing himself it was moral to cut Linda's head in half; it had to happen, and he has to sit by and endure it.
She's in the middle of hard labor as dawn breaks outside the window. Their doctor is old and well-recommended, and all the S-Mart's healthcare plan would pay for. He asks them what they wanted to call the baby and Ash says 'Rocky'.
"If it's a girl or a boy?"
"Either," Ash growls. "Just get it out of her."
The doctor frowns at them, but dedicates himself to guiding Sheila through her labor. He doesn't mind their unusual form of Lamaze technique.
"Imagine you've got a rock," Ash whispers. "Pretend I said something to make you mad. Now aim…"
She giggles again. It's probably a good omen that the baby is born to the too-rare sound of its mother's laughter under a Detroit dawn.
***
It's a girl – a little girl half the length of his arm, with a patch of curly brown hair on her head and what he's fairly sure is her mother's eyes.
She isn't turning. No snarling, no white eyes, no threats of soul-swallowing. He has no idea how long it's going to last, if it's forever. The moment is enough, the instant of looking down and recognizing parts of himself in her already, of knowing what it's like to have done it.
"Is she Rocky?" Sheila asks, her voice weak from the effort.
"She doesn't look like one," Ash says. He sits at the edge of the bed. Sheila is radiant but exhausted, and facing the lingering annoyance of pain, but it doesn't matter. They survived this, they could live through anything.
He returns the baby to her arms and lingers beside the bed, watching the both of them. He remembers his quest for normalcy and realizes this is close. Sure, she may be six hundred years older than him, and he might have a metal hand where the right used to be, and demons liked to come at them at the worst times, but they could still give her what she needed.
Finally, he spoke. "Uh…thanks. For putting up with me long enough to make sure she's here."
Her laughter is musical, even in his serious mood. "Sweet, foolish man. I do love thee."
The End
