The Man Who Can't Be Moved

“Your chariot, mademoiselle,” I drawl, as I push an empty wheelchair into my wife’s hospital room; setting the brakes after I swing the contraption with a gallant flourish and park it at the side of her bed.

“I’m not an invalid,” Em grumbles miserably, eyeing her method of transportation with the utmost disdain as she wriggles her way across the bed and swings her legs over the sides.

The nurse has temporarily removed her IV lines; all that remains is the plastic ‘butterfly’ bandage that the secures the needle into the top of her hand as the see through tubing and a half empty bag of sugar water dangles from the metal stand at the head of the bed. I wish I could say that she looked better; I wish I could honestly admit that there’s been a dramatic improvement to the sickly grey pallor that taints her skin or the dark circles under her eyes and that she no longer suffers from dizzy spells if she moves to suddenly or quickly. Despite her ability to keep her spirits up and to not only keep up with her infamous playful and smart ass banter but to eat nearly everything in sight, she looks terribly ill and the medication that has been deposited into her at a near constant rate has done little to settle her blood pressure down. On the plus side her cramps are still present but not as frequent and thankfully there hasn’t been any spotting in a few hours; the fetal monitor has kept a constant eye on the babies and while their mommy’s health is extremely touch and go, they seem to be flourishing.

And showing the ‘evil cyst’ who’s boss, in the doctor’s own words.

“Don’t be grumpy,” I lightly warn, as I hold out a hand. “I don’t tolerate grumpy.”

“What are you going to do?” she asks, as all five of her fingers curl around only two of mine and I lay my free hand on the small of her back and assist her with sliding off the bed. “Send me into the corner for a time out? Put me over your knee and spank you?”

“You’d enjoy the last one way too much,” I reply, as I help her lower herself into the wheelchair before reaching for her glasses as they sit on top of an open copy of the recent Cosmo on the nightstand. “Shouldn’t you be reading things like ‘What To Expect When You’re Expecting’?” I ask, gently slipping the glasses onto her face and then tapping a finger against the tip of her nose. “Something a little more…mommy like?”

“Are you going to give up reading Sports Illustrated or looking at nudie magazines?” she challenges. “Are you going to start reading things that are more daddy like?”

“Sports Illustrated and porn are staples in every guy’s life,” I explain. “There’s not one daddy out there that doesn’t read about sports or ogle naked breasts.”

She rolls her eyes and reaches up to yank the elastic from her hair.

“Weren’t you supposed to drink this before the ultrasound?” I ask, as I snag a one litre bottle of water -with at least four inches of liquid still inside- from the bedside table. “Isn’t there some sort of rule about this?”

“You’re supposed to finish the entire thing an hour before,” she confirms, as she combs her fingers through her hair, gathers it up into a ponytail and then secures it with the elastic. “But I don’t know what woman can possibly drink that much water. I’m not a fucking camel, Max. I can’t drink all of that and hold it in for an hour and I certainly can’t hold the pee back when some ultrasound tech whose probably never experienced pregnancy before is pushing down on my stomach.”

“There’s just a little bit left,” I tap the bottle against her shoulder and then uncap it. “Just drink the last of it before we leave and…”

“I am telling you, I can’t drink it. Not even that little bit. I’m about to explode here, okay? The babies are practically drowning. I hardly doubt that little bit of water is going to make much of a difference.”

“It’s just a little bit,” I shake the bottle in front of her face. “They wouldn’t say a litre if you weren’t supposed to drink a litre. Don’t tempt fate, Em. Don’t get karma’s panties all in a bunch ‘cause you can’t follow directions.”

“I am telling you that I will burst if I drink anymore!” she cries in exasperation. “What is wrong with you? Why do you have to be like this? Why do you have to be so bossy and demanding? It’s my bladder and if I say it’s full, it’s full!”

“Humour me, would you?” I lean over the back of the wheelchair and set the bottle between her legs. “It’s like two really big sips. That’s it. Just take it with you and finish it on the way.”

“You are fucking impossible,” she grumbles. “Why do you have to be like this? Why do you have to be so damn bossy all the time?”

“Because I call the shots around here,” I tease, and press a kiss to her temple and then drop another on the top of her head before snapping off the brakes and wheeling her out of the room. “I wear the pants, remember?”

“Maxime…” she sighs exasperatedly, places an elbow on the arm rest and rests the side of her face in her palm. “…how many times do we have to go over this? I just let you think that you wear the pants in the relationship. I just humour you and let you think you rule the roost. In reality, everyone knows that I am the one and only boss in this marriage. I am the Queen of my domain and you…well you’re the court jester.”

“Court jester? For real? Can’t I at least be the fantastically charming and devastatingly handsome knight that you’re screwing behind the King’s back?”

“Court jester,” Em insists. “Your ALS Motors commercials and all of your hideously ugly Ed Hardy shit and your closet full of plaid shirts designate you as the court jester. And what’s wrong with that anyway? What’s wrong with being the hilarious, affable and fantastically charming and devastatingly handsome court jester that the Queen bangs behind her husband’s back?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I shrug. “It’s just that…I don’t know…being a knight is more…manly. More masculine.”

“Trust me; I have never once called your masculinity in question. Anyone that’s been growing a beard like you can since they were in junior A? That’s obviously a guy with a whole lot of testosterone rampaging through his body. And if we also toss in your love for women and your previous behaviour when it comes to anything with boobs and a vag, I think it’s safe to say that you’re never at risk of ever being considered ‘unmanly’. And besides…” she grimaces, shifts uncomfortably in her seat and lays a hand over her stomach. “…this is my fantasy. The whole ‘knights of the round table’ thing. If I say you’re a court jester, you’re a court jester. End of story.”

“We have some seriously weird conversations,” I conclude, and then give a polite smile and a nod in farewell to the group of nurses gathered at the station at the front of the ward.

“Everything about us is seriously weird,” my wife says. “Do you really think there’s anything at all normal or traditional about us? I mean, we didn’t exactly have the most…conventional…start to our relationship. Look at everything that’s happened since that night. We decide to get married on a whim, when I do get pregnant we find out that it not only happened out of wedlock, but your sperm decided to get extra crafty that night.”

“Just think? If our lives keep going like this? They’ll never be boring. And who really wants to be normal? Who really wants to be traditional?”

“You come from a totally traditional, totally Catholic French Canadian family! You’re supposed to be conventional like the rest of the Talbots. According to your grandmother, you’re supposed to do things by the book! You’re supposed to save yourself until you’re married and you’re supposed to have sex only for the sake of procreating.”

“My grandmother is almost ninety and going senile,” I point out.

“She’s convinced you’re the devil incarnate. She loves you to death but she is convinced that someone or something completely corrupted you. Did you know that both your brothers went on to marry the first and only women they ever had sex with?”

“My brothers went on to marry the first and only women they ever had sex with because no other females would ever have sex with them in the first place. You’ve seen my brothers. Nice enough guys. But I think it’s safe to say that I inherited the good looking genes and they both fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”

“Your brothers happen to be very cute,” Em argues.

“You must not ever be wearing your glasses when you’re around them,” I tease. “And who cares about what my grandmother thinks? So what if we didn’t follow all the rules in the ‘Big Catholic Guide Book for Dummies’? It’s not like we’ve ever done anything we’re going to burn in hell for.”

“Well I don’t know about you,” she chides, and I tug playfully on her hair and tip her head backwards in order to press a kiss to her lips. “You’re all sorts of evil. And now that we’re on the subject of evil…” she grimaces yet again and rubs her stomach in a slow circular motion. “…I don’t know who the resident party animal is, but someone does not now how to keep still for very long.”

“It’s baby A,” I tell her, as I reach out to press the down button for the elevator. “Wasn’t baby A the one that was mooning the camera the other day? He’s the bad one. He’s the one that likes to cause mommy all sorts of grief. He’s got ADD already and he’s not even out of the womb yet.”

“You really need to knock it off with this whole ‘he’ talk all the time. You’re probably totally jinxing yourself, you know. You’ve got your hopes up that you’re going to have at least one boy and…”

“Not one. Two,” I correct. “Two boys.”

“…and you’re going to be seriously crushed if we find out that it’s two girls. I can just picture it now; you having an emotional meltdown and sobbing like a baby and screaming ‘oh the humanity!’ right in the middle of the crowded waiting room.”

“It won’t devastate me if we find out they’re girls. Girls are just amazing. As long as the babies are healthy and they’ve got all their parts and everything’s where it should be, that’s all that really matters. But I am telling you that those babies…” leaning over her shoulder, I lay a hand on her stomach. “…they are not girls. They’re boys. So deal with it.”

“What? You’re psychic now? Did you look into your crystal ball or something?”

“Trust me,” I press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Two boys. Two sons. How about we bet on it? Want to make a friendly wager? If we go in there and they tell us that we’re having boys, you have to give up all say in how the nursery is decorated. If I want a hockey theme, it’s a hockey theme. No bitching on your part.”

“And if they’re both girls? Or just one is a girl?” she inquires.

“Then you get to decorate the nursery any way you want. As long as you promise me that you won’t subject my son to anything Disney or anything with flowers on it. If it’s two girls, you can turn that room into a complete pink paradise. Deal?”

“Deal,” she says, and we agree to the terms through a soft and sweet kiss as opposed to handshake.

Neither of us have the guts to even consider that after tomorrow morning, our lives may turn into a complete nightmare. That there might not be any babies to decorate a nursery for.

*********

“I’m scared,” Em whispers; her eyes riveted on the ceiling teary voice cutting through the heavy silence that had descended on the dimly lit sonogram room when the technician had left to ensure that all the images had been sent to the head radiologist and the OB for analysis.

The 4D scan had been far and above anything I ever could have imagined; it had been incredible to witness real time, colour images of the babies and to see their tiny fingers and their toes and their facial features -remarkably developed and easy to make out despite having another twenty weeks to go- and to see them blink their eyes and hear their hearts beating. I’m not a professional and I certainly have never seen an ultrasound outside of the old fashioned black and white images we’d been privy to since we’d found out we were pregnant to begin with, but to me everything had looked fine. Everything seemed like it was in the right place and in proper working order and that the babies seemed to be thriving considering their growth was now forcing them to share room with the ‘evil cyst’ as the OB calls it.

“What are you scared about, baby?” I lean over in my chair parked next to the exam table and reach out to lay a hand on the top of her head. I’d noticed that she’d refused to look at the screen during the entire half hour exam; she’d kept her attention focused on the ceiling and had fought tears the entire time and had refused to glance over at the screen no matter how many times I encouraged her to do so. It had been an incredibly emotional experience for me; I’d had to choke back my own tears a few times.

“I’m scared that I’m going to lose them,” she admits. “That’s why I couldn’t look, Max. It’s why I didn’t want to see them. Because once I see them it makes it totally real and I…” her voice cracks with emotion and I wait patiently for her to continue. “…I don’t want to bond with them like that. I’m worried that if I do I’ll lose them.”

“But you already are bonding with them,” I tell her, as my thumb softly and soothingly caresses her forehead. “They’re inside of you. You feel them move around. That’s bonding with them.”

“But if I look at them it’ll just make things worse on me if something bad happens,” she frets, and then reaches up to frantically brush away a tear that slips down her cheek. “And I know that must make me a terrible mother. To not be able to look at my own babies…”

“You’re an amazing mommy,” I assure her, and press a feathery kiss to her cheek and nuzzle her temple with the tip of my nose. “And you’re going to be able to even more of an amazing mommy in a few months. When they actually get here. I know you’re scared, Emmy-Lou. I’m scared too.”

“You are?” she sniffles noisily and lays a hand on the side of my cheek.

“Of course I am. You’re my wife. Those are my babies. I don’t want anything happening to you or them. But I know in my heart that things are going to be okay…” I press a kiss to her palm. “…I just know that everything’s going to be alright.”

Em gives a brave smile and affectionately tousles the hair at back of my head; I lift myself up of my chair briefly in order to press a tender kiss to her lips.

“Do you think that the ultrasound tech was acting weird?” she inquires, as I return to my seat. “Do you think maybe there was something wrong and she just didn’t want to say it? Don’t you find it a little odd that she barely said a word? All she did was point different body parts out and the umbilical cords and the heart beats and all that. She didn’t talk about what else she was seeing, she didn’t crack a smile…”

“They’re not supposed to say anything, babe. You know that. The ultrasound tech is just suppose to do the scan and that’s that. They’re just supposed to keep a total poker face and do their job and then leave everything else up to the doctors. Just because she didn’t say anything doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong. Don’t read to much into that, okay? Don’t get all worked up over things like that.”

“But everything looked fine, right?” she presses. “You watched the entire thing. Everything looked okay with them? They didn’t seem to be in any trouble or anything like that? You didn’t notice anything strange? You didn’t…”

“Em, I’m not a doctor or anything like that. I can’t make diagnoses and I can’t…”

“What does your daddy instinct tell you?” she asks. “You saw them, Max. You saw our babies.”

“They’re still really little,” I remind her. “They’re still tiny and they have a long way to go. All I know is that everything was in the right spot on both of them. And that they had really pink skin and tons of pitch black hair that went like this…” I draw a V in the middle of my forehead. “…reminded me of that kid Pugsly in the Adams Family. Isn’t that what his hair looked like? Both of them have that. I think that saying my grandmother told you is true. About the more hair a baby has, the more heartburn the mother gets. ‘Cause our kids got shit loads of hair and you always have heartburn. True Talbots though, don’t you think?” I chuckle as I press a series of kisses along her jaw. “Hairy little beasts already.”

“But they looked okay? Did you feel anything when you saw them? Think anything? Did you…?”

“The only thing I felt when I saw them was love, babe. Lots of love. For them and for you. And all I could think about was how amazing you are and how you’re giving me the most incredible gift I could ever ask for. And how they were the most beautiful babies I’d ever seen and I couldn’t wait to hold them. I didn’t think anything else. Nothing bad. All good.”

She gives a heavy sigh of relief.

“Have faith, okay?” I rest my hand on the top of her head once again and place my nose against her ear. “Just have some faith in them. And in yourself. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“Mister and Mrs Talbot?” the ultrasound technician pokes her head into the room and gives an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to interrupt…”

“It’s okay,” I assure her, and then use gentle fingertips to clear the glistening tears from Em’s cheeks.

“I sent copies of your scan to both the radiologist on call and your OB,” she explains, as she wanders into the room and softly closes the door behind her. “And I made a copy and put it on this CD…” she holds the item in question -marked with the words TALBOT BABIES A&B and the day’s date and time. “…all you have to do is put that in your computer at home and you can take screenshots to keep for yourself and to give to family and friends. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would love some pictures.”

“Too many too count,” I confirm, and then accept the CD with an appreciative smile.

“Well would you like to see if maybe we can get a look at what you’re exactly having? Now I can’t give you guarantee of a hundred percent accuracy because techs have been wrong before, but these ultrasounds are pretty sophisticated and can pick up on even the smallest of details.”

“Smallest of details,” Em playfully tugs on the hair on my forearm. “If they’re boys and have ‘small details’ I guess they aren’t yours, huh?”

I’m grateful for the dim lighting in the room when I feel flush creep into my cheeks at not only my wife’s comments, but the technician’s snicker.

“If you’ll just pull up your pyjama top a little and pull down your pants a bit…” the tech instructs, as she returns to her stool next to the exam table. “…we’ll take another look…see if anyone has their legs open to make things easier for us.”

“Taking off my top and pulling down my pants is what got me to this point,” Em quips, as she follows the woman‘s instructions. “Not to mention I think it’s quite apparent that we’re here because neither of us kept our legs closed.”

“You’re not very funny,” I whisper, and then tightly clasp one of her tiny hands in both of mine

“I make jokes when I’m nervous,” my wife says with a shrug, and then gives a small gasp when the tech applies the cool sonogram jelly to her bare skin. “Please don’t press too hard,” she pleads. “I’m about thirty seconds away from peeing my pants.”

“I’ll be as gentle and as quick as possible,” the technician promises, and then turns her attention to the screen beside her. “Okay…so baby A is actually in a pretty good position…kinda just lounging with their legs wide open…”

“Must be a puck slut in the making,” Em mutters.

“…and from what I can see…and it’s a really good angle and a very clear picture…baby A is a …boy.”

“Are you sure?” my wife inquires. “Like how sure are you?”

“Like I said, I can’t say it’s a hundred percent accurate. But let’s put it this way…this baby has the wrong parts if it’s a girl.”

“See?” a massive grin immediately spreads from ear to ear and I lean in to press a kiss to my wife’s temple. “I told you there was at least one boy.”

“And baby B is…”

Both Em and I hold our breath; I close my eyes and place my forehead against hers as she reaches out and affectionately comes her fingers through my hair.

“…well congratulations, mommy and daddy!” the technician chirps. “In a few more months, you’re going to be welcoming two sons into the world!”

“Yes!” the word explodes out of my lips and I fight the urge to jump to my feet and execute a double fist pump. “See, baby…” I press a kiss to my wife’s brow; she’s both slightly taken back and amused by my outburst an she’s staring at me as if she thinks I’m the weirdest, lamest guy on the face of the earth. “…I told you it was two boys…I told you I was psychic!”

“You’re a dork is what you are,” she declares, but then lays a hand on the side of my face and kisses me tenderly.

And for that brief moment, all of our worries and fears about the operation the follow morning disappear.

Life seems unbelievably perfect.