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What? I wince again, my hand now in Lo’s. “That’s wrong.”
“You’ve been fucking out of it, Lily.”
I retreated in my head. It’s what I’m good at, unfortunately.
Lo places his free hand on my kneecap, and he peeks between my legs. I’m too lightheaded to read his reaction. “How has she been?” he asks him.
“Out of it,” he repeats.
“An ambulance is coming, and maintenance is working on restarting the elevator,” he explains. “I couldn’t get a hold of either of you—and I thought…” He glares at the ceiling, his eyes flooding, upset and angry. “I called every goddamn hospital nearby. Then we found your car in the parking lot, and I knew you didn’t get in a wreck.”
Ryke stands up. “You saw that the elevator was fucking stuck?”
“Connor did. We found someone who knew how to get into the elevator shaft, and maintenance has been trying to restart it for the past two hours—”
I scream at the contraction and squeeze the life out of Lo’s hand. Ohmy…I almost puke from the pain, nausea building in my throat. Lo strokes my cheek and whispers something that I can’t make out in my state. I dazedly nod.
Ryke goes to the open hatch. He jumps, grabs hold of the edge, and pulls his body up with one hand. I have no energy to spare to freak out. Plus, he returns in a quick second. “I hear sirens.” Though it’s a distant sound.
An ambulance is coming. Or is it in my head?
I try to relax at the first thought.
Lo and Ryke lock gazes, and they exchange a look of gratitude for one another. For Ryke taking care of me. For Lo coming to the rescue.
“She needs you,” Ryke tells him.
Lo stares back at me, and I stare at Lo. Our history blankets me with warm security, and I drown into those amber eyes. He cups both of my cheeks again.
“You and me,” he says.
“Lily and Lo,” I breathe.
“Lo and Lily.” He wipes his own fallen tear and he nods. “We’re going to be okay.”
I murmur, “I believe it.”
The next events happen quickly, rushed between never-ending contractions, my screams, and an incoming baby. The elevator groans to a start. When we reach a new floor, the doors open to paramedics, and I’m hurriedly put on a stretcher.
My sisters appear. So does Connor.
I can hardly think while they assess and then move urgently, all to bring to me to the hospital. I never let go of Lo’s hand.
Outside, as snow flutters in the pitch-black Christmas Eve night, the paramedics open the ambulance doors and I’m wheeled towards safety. My hands on my knees, gritting my teeth.
Rose shouts at Xander to stay inside my uterus.
Connor coaches me to breathe.
Ryke talks to an EMT.
Daisy sets a reindeer-shaped sugar cookie on my belly. Thank you, Daisy. It’s what I really wanted.
And Lo is right beside me, clutching my hand, telling me that this is real. That no matter what happens, he’ll be here.
By the time the world catches up with me, I’m in the hospital, the clock strikes an hour past midnight.
And a Christmas miracle cries softly in my arms.
Lily & Loren Hale welcome the birth of their baby boy
XANDER HALE
December 25th, 2022
2023
“I married someone much braver than me.”
- Garrison Abbey, We Are Calloway (Season 5 Episode 12 – Street Fighter & Diamonds)
March 2023
The Meadows Cottage
Philadelphia
DAISY MEADOWS
“Are you sure?” I ask Rose for the twentieth time. Rose has a great track record when it comes to decision-making. She’s resolute, firm and unbending. I see that each time I ask, are you sure?
“I want to do this for you. Let me.” Rose clasps my hand, both of us sitting together on the window nook. Connor and Ryke are quiet on the couch, watching us.
Rose had her last child about a year ago. Ben Pirrip Cobalt. He naps in a nearby playpen next to Tom and Eliot. I can hear laughter from outside, today a rare warm day.
I glance out the window. In the cul-de-sac, Moffy rides his bike in a circle while Janie, in a pale blue skirt and cheetah sweater, stands on the back pegs, her hands on his shoulders. They’ll both be eight in the summer.
Coconut circles Sulli, not to catch her attention exactly. The white husky protects the five-year-old, ears perked and alert. Sullivan has one of Moffy’s skateboards, but she’s still learning how to use it. She keeps tripping into the grass, but like her dad, she never gives up.
Today is all about Ryke and me making babies, but not in the traditional sense.
Sullivan has cousins as close as brothers and sisters. She’d be fine as an only child, so that’s not really why I’d want another baby.
I was in surgery and close to dying after I gave birth. There was a greater chance that I’d never wake up and see the next day. I wasn’t supposed to live, and in the moments where Ryke was told that he might lose me—where he knew he could become a single father in an instant—he thought about the chance where I’d see him again.
He thought about me and what I’d want.
Ryke made sure the doctor preserved my remaining eggs. In what he calls one of the two hardest moments of his life, he did this for me.
Through my body’s twenty-some years of ups and downs and a risky birth, I was left with eggs on a laboratory dish. Combined with Ryke’s sperm, they became embryos, all frozen until we need them. I feel sick at the thought of wasting something that feels like the last pieces of a certain part of me—something that Ryke made sure to keep safe.
We might not have physically had sex to make those embryos, but so much love went into that creation. I want to try and see if surrogacy will work, but for however daring I may seem, I’m terrified often. And parts of this terrify me.
“I can’t be the sole decider in this,” I tell Rose. “I just can’t. It’s a huge deal, and it’s going to affect all of us.” I look at Ryke. Then Connor.
Rose does too.
Connor sets down his coffee mug and then leans back. “Ryke and I have concerns.”
Rose’s back arches, preparing for battle. “You’ve been talking? Together?”
“Yeah,” Ryke says. “We fucking do that sometimes.”
Connor stretches his arm over the couch. “Though it can be mildly annoying when he just stops speaking like someone cut off his tongue.”
“Not everyone has to fill every fucking pause.”
“Concerns?” I interject to steer this sinking ship to land. “You’ve both been talking about concerns that involve…us?” I motion between the four of us.
They’re quiet again, their gazes intrusive and intense and practically burning through Rose and me.
“Okay, so just my sister and me,” I realize. Rose squeezes my hand in support. I silently hear her war chants: we shall prevail over our foes.
Which just may be our husbands in this scenario.
“Darling,” Connor begins.
“Don’t darling me,” Rose snaps. “We don’t need coddling from either of you. We’re trying to make a fucking baby, not be babied.”
“Hey, I didn’t say a fucking thing,” Ryke growls.
This went astray real fast. “Let’s regroup here.” They all respect my voice so much, and I don’t have any sort of problem saying what I want to say. So I just speak. “I think it’s important that we listen to everyone’s point-of-views on the issue because it really involves us all. I don’t want to infer what you guys are thinking, so just let loose.” I wave to them like I’m bowing, but I can’t really bow while I sit.
Ryke nods to Connor to be the one to talk. Ryke isn’t much of a talker, but that’s already been established.
“Here’s what we know,” Connor says calmly, his new approach easing Rose more than before. “There are only two embryos. If they fa
il, it’s over.”
Part one of why Daisy Meadows is terrified. I had more eggs, but not all of them successfully created an embryo with Ryke’s sperm. Only two did.
We have two small chances.
“And?” Rose crosses her ankles, in a black Calloway Couture dress that hugs her frame beautifully.
Connor says a word in French and stops himself, his eyes flitting to me. I’m the only one who can’t speak the language, so he respectfully keeps it in English. “We’re concerned about the possibility where this fails and you’re both emotionally distraught in the end.”
Rose glares. “Then stop thinking about us being emotionally distraught.” My sister is defensive because she wants this to work as much as I do, and bad realities hurt.
“My main concern is with you, Rose.” His severity grips every word. “Grief is a realistic outcome, and will you be able to meet it?”
