Good Man

Baby baby
I'm taken with the notion
To love you with the sweetest of devotion
- Amy Grant



March 23th, 2014

Caroline was never more uncomfortable with her body than she was on this very day. For the life of her, she could not remember the days leading up to her previous two pregnancies with Mikey and Chloe feeling this awkward. Maybe it was because this time around she was carrying two babies instead of one. Maybe it had something more mentally to do with not having a husband this time around or knowing who the father of these unborn twins were. Or, maybe third time is just not a goddamn charm.

Mikey and Chloe were in what was once Timmy's bedroom, sitting side by side at the foot of the bottom bunk where Chloe slept; her brother sleeping on the bunk above. Their feet were dangling over the edge as they stared straight ahead at the red, Disney's Cars television, watching the DVD of Madagascar 2: Out of Africa with their mouths hung open and completely dazed by the images on the small screen.

Caroline's birth father, Alex, had done a great job in such a short amount of time, putting the room together for his grandkids. The bedroom downstairs off the finished basement was set up for Caroline with what belongings she had brought north to her father's Adirondack home, as well as two bassinets for the babies she was due to give birth to two damn days ago.

She was currently in the living room, with the 70s era record player pumping out the tunes of Fleetwood Mac's 1975 self-titled album and her hips were swaying from side to side as she danced the jittery feelings out of her system. That, and to help induce labor.

She was going crazy here.

Alex was away for the evening, playing guitar for a friend's band at a bar in Plattsburgh as a favor, and she was home, at his house, shaking around to the blue alto voice of Christine McVie singing the song "Say You Love Me."

Since Caroline had been given the due date of March 21st many months ago she had been counting down each hour, wondering why she didn't go into labor a minute after midnight on that very day. She knew there was no way to know when she would start having contractions unless she had scheduled a C-section, but that was something she didn't want to do. She wanted to do this naturally. Her hips were wide enough and childbirth was supposed to get easier after the first child, so...

Here she was. Dancing in the living room.

She paused for a moment when she decided she wanted to listen to "Rhiannon" her favorite Fleetwood Mac song sung by Stevie Nicks, her idol. Waddling over to the record player, she lifted the needle of the album and set it back down into the specific groove that denoted where the song began.

As soon as the guitar and bass lines started, she began to sway once more. Then came the drum beats, followed by Stevie Nicks' voice, and Caroline began to sing along, as she usually did with any song she enjoyed. Especially anything by Stevie Nicks.

"Rhiannon rings like a bell in the night, and wouldn't you love to love her? Takes to the sky like a bird in flight and who will be her lover?" Then came the chorus, in which Caroline threw her hands up and began to dance a little more anxiously, conjuring her previous experiences of dancing and singing across stages of the world with her now former band, The Sinners. "All your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind. Would you stay if she promised to you heaven? Would you ever win?"

Before Caroline could even utter the first word of the next verse, she felt a sharp cramp shoot up her body.

Yay!

A second, even sharper cramp followed a few moments afterward.

Omigod, it's almost pathetic how happy I am to be excited to have sharp pains! It means contractions! Woo! Labor, here I come! she thought happily to herself.

Turning off the record player, turning around the corner from the living room into the hallway which her father and her kids' newly minted bedroom were, she reached the door to her right, at the end of the small hall, which was closest to the black, spiral staircase that headed downstairs. Pushing open the door, she snapped at her son and daughter due in part to the urgency to get a move on and the next contraction that began to soar through her.

"Turn off the movie, Mikey! We gotta call grandpa Alex and tell him to meet us at the hospital." When her kids hesitated, she added more harshly, "Now!"

Mikey immediately fumbled for the tiny remote that went along with the Cars TV and scooted off the bed. "Are the babies coming?" he inquired, well aware that his mother was carrying more than one child in her.

Caroline nodded, gesturing with her hand for the brother-sister duo to follow her out of the bedroom, while trying the mask a wince created by the waning contraction.

"I'm gonna have babies, mommy?" Chloe muttered in a questioning voice as she skipped behind her brother.

"Someday you'll have your own babies," Caroline corrected. "This time I'm having babies. You are gonna have two brothers, or two sisters." She didn't bother explaining further about the possibility of there being one boy and one girl. Chloe was too young to really care anyway.

As mother and children made their way into the living room, Caroline pointed to the overnight bag near the front door, set aside specifically for this kind of event. "Mikey, be a sweetie and carry that bag for mommy, okay?"

"Okay, mom," her young son replied dutifully.

She waddled over to her purse which she'd left on the couch and handed it to Chloe. "And you can carry this for mommy."

Chloe grinned, happy to have something to do, 'cause it made her feel like a big girl. "I'm helping, too, mommy," she stated.

"Yes, you are. Just like a big girl."

As Caroline grabbed the car keys to Alex's second vehicle, a black '05 Honda CR-V, which he'd told her she was free to use whenever she needed it while she and her kids stayed with him, she stopped Chloe from going anywhere so she could pull her cell phone out of her purse.

As she dialed Alex's cell number, she gestured for the kids to start going outside, as she followed behind them to lock up.

The phone rang four times before going to voicemail, which told Caroline her dad either couldn't hear it ringing, it was on vibrate, or he was busy still performing with his friend's band. So, she left a quick voicemail, letting him know she was heading to the hospital with the kids because the contractions had begun and for him to meet them there as soon as she could.

Flipping the phone shut, she unlocked the car doors and told Mikey to hand her the overnight bag. She placed it in the passenger side and also took her purse from Chloe, who she then went to help into her car seat. Mikey scampered into his own side of the car in the back-seat and buckled himself up like a good boy. Caroline moved around to the driver's side in a hurry, grimacing as yet another, stronger than before, contraction began to hit her.

She let out a pained sigh as she slid into the driver's seat, reaching her hand around to pass her cell off to Mikey.

"Mikey, you remember Aunt Timmy's number?"

"No."

Caroline turned on the car and caught her son's eyes in the rearview. Rattling off each digit in her sister's phone number, she coached her son into how to call his aunt. "When Aunt Timmy answers the phone, tell her your mommy is driving to the hospital that's why you're calling her, okay? Tell her mommy is in labor."

"Okay..." Mikey trailed, after he punched the numbers he was told. After a few moments, he smiled. "Heya, Aunt Timmy. It's Mikey. My mommy's having her babies now..."

* * *

Caroline bustled into the hospital's maternity ward with her two children in tow, at her feet; Mikey back to carrying the overnight bag, and Chloe back to carrying her mommy's purse. Caroline pounded a closed fist on the nurse's station desk to get the attention of anyone.

"Hello! I'm having contractions here and I need help, thankyouverymuch."

A nurse came around to her immediately and asked, stupidly, what was wrong.

Caroline gave her a "you are completely retarded" look and reiterated, "I'm two days overdue to give birth. My contractions have started. They're about ten minutes apart. Get me into fucking stirrups!" she growled, ignoring the oncoming of another contraction. "Make that seven minutes apart," she added.

"Mommy," Mikey muttered.

Caroline looked down at him. "I know. I'm sorry, baby. Mommy didn't mean to say a bad word."

Just then Chloe giggled. "No, mommy. Not the bad word." Caroline followed the direction of where Chloe was suddenly pointing. "You peed your pants," she spoke as if it were some great secret.

Actually, Caroline had not peed herself, but rather her water had broken.



Three hours later, it was just after one in the morning and Caroline was in those stirrups she had been demanding so much of when she had arrived to the hospital. She was also feeling no more contractions, thanks to the wonderful magic of epidurals. And in between the pushes she was making, she made inquiries to how her children were doing.

A nurse had informed her that after Caroline had been ushered into a birthing room, a nurse had looked after them until Caroline's father arrived and he was now in the waiting room with them. Waiting.

Caroline was content to know they were all okay. She was happy to know labor was going swimmingly; no problems whatsoever. She was glad she hadn't passed out from straining like she had when she was in labor with Mikey nearly five years ago.

And as she pushed for the umpteenth time, she heard the doctor exclaim, "It's a boy!"

Caroline peered over the sheet that draped over her lap as the doctor lifted up a little, red face infant who had his lips crunched up in a scowl and then let loose with the most unholy of wails.

Leaning back against the pillow behind her on the bed, Caroline let out a sigh of relief and a laugh. She had another son. And he was so beautiful and she immediately loved him so much with all her heart had to give.

She wanted to hold him right away, but the doctor and nurses were aware that Caroline was carrying twins and labor for the second twin would kick in shortly now that the first round had temporarily subsided. So, one of the nurses took the baby over to a bed where they began to clean him up and wrap him up tightly in a blue blanket and place a blue cap on his head to keep him warm.

And just as expected, the monitors beside Caroline's bed began to go crazy again, signaling she was starting an onslaught of new contractions.

"Time for round two," the doctor announced with a smile.

Caroline began to push again for what felt like only seconds but was in reality more like three minutes. And after those three minutes of pushing, she heard another wail.

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Caroline didn't know if they were sad or happy, as the doctor announced the second baby was a girl.

She had one of each. Again.

The baby girl was taken to be cleaned and wrapped up like her twin brother and when all was said and done, and after the afterbirth had been cleaned up and Caroline was all taken care of, two nurses approached Caroline on either side of her bed.

"Would you like to hold them one at a time, or together?" the nurse holding her new daughter asked.

"Together," was Caroline's response.

She opened her arms up and her new babies were placed in both her arms carefully and lovingly. They rested on her chest quite sleepily and Caroline just smiled.

"My beautiful babies," she cooed.



Caroline didn't sleep much the rest of the night after giving birth to the twins. She had been moved into a private room and she had learned later on that her father had taken Mikey and Chloe home with him and was having a friend of his bring the CR-V back as well so it didn't sit around in the hospital parking lot.

It was around eleven in the morning, on March 24th, 2014 and she was awake and once again holding her newborn children in her arms. She had just finished nursing them; the nurse showing her a trick on how to nurse both at the same time, which was awkward but time-efficient.

They were nearly ten hours old and already looking older by the minute. They weren't so red as they had been as soon as they were born. Their skin had taken on a more, normal pinkish hue and the thing that struck Caroline the most was not that just that because they were fraternal twins because one was a boy and the other a girl, but because the girl had brownish-hazel eyes like Caroline, whereas the boy had green eyes.

Well, now she definitely would find it hard to pass them off as Mike's, via in vitro fertilization, posthumously.

When the nurse returned minutes later, she had a manila folder in one hand and a pen in the other.

"How you doing, mommy?"

Caroline smirked at the nurse. "Better, thanks." She then gestured to the papers the other woman was pulling out of the folder. "Those the birth certificates?"

The nurse nodded. "Yep. I have your information already filled out, but I was wondering on the father's information: full name, date of birth, place of birth...the typical stuff," she replied with a smile.

"Well, it's kind of a long story," Caroline began slowly. "Uh, the twins were conceived by in vitro fertilization. My late husband saved his sperm in case something would happen and I wanted more kids. And, uh...he died almost two years ago, and I decided I wanted more of his children. I know it's selfish to deny them knowing their father, but I wanted more of him to carry on in the world," she lied. The nurse didn't seem bothered by the story, so Caroline continued. "His name was Michael Ryan Pritchard, born May 4th, 1972 in Oakland, California..."

Caroline watched as the nurse jotted down the information without question and then look up. "Have you decided on the babies' names?"

Pausing for a moment, Caroline considered names she had been throwing around in her head for the last few months.

She looked at her son, who was looking back at her with his big green eyes and making puckering motions with his mouth as if he were still nursing or already trying to talk. He was biologically the son of either Gerard, Dave or Billie Joe. They were each her friends and she knew her biological father was part Native American on his mother's side, Caroline's paternal grandmother.

So, her son would be named for her friends, whichever was the father, and for her own father.

"Lakota Alexander Pritchard for my son," she finally answered.

"Lakota?" the nurse questioned curiously.

"It means 'friend.'"

The nurse just smiled, jotted down the name, then moved to the second certificate, and most likely was filling in Mike's information again.

"For my daughter: Rhiannon Giselle Pritchard." Caroline looked from her daughter to the nurse once more. "After my favorite song, and my sister who I miss more than words..."