Red

“I fucking hate you!” her voice was stained with immense pain as she tried to practice breathing the way she was taught to. She was sure that she was cutting off the circulation to his hand as he outstretched his fingers from where they were intertwined for a moment before allowing them to curl around her own again. His face was blank, he heard was she was saying, he knew what was going on but in his head he was lagging. He waited for this. His eyes didn’t know where to look first and so they jetted rapidly between the coaxing doctor to his left and the woman he’d spent every day waking up next to for the past five years. She groaned again and arched her back squeezing her eyes closed tightly in the process. Her forehead was glistening and damp making her the baby tendrils curl as they stuck to her skin. Bringing his hand up, his smoothed his free hand over her hairline smoothing them back and flat. Through gritted teeth she groaned once more, her breathing completely erratic and in turn making his do the same.

Her mouth opened and her vocal cords produced a sound that he’d never heard from her before, one that could classify as an odd mash up of a pained cry, and a gurgled, “fuck”. She squeezed his hand again, and threw her head back on the bed, her eyes looking to the ceiling as she tried to catch her breath. His eyes trailed from her hair damp and stuck to her neck up to her face and caught the few tears that began to cascade down her cheeks. Squeezing her hand gently, he leaned over her his lips against her forehead as he wiped the tears on the left side of her face away with his calloused thumb, “You’ve got this babe, you’re doing great,” he told her bringing his blue eyes to the same emeralds he’d studied numerous times.

The doctor’s voice trying to coax her was background noise, as she brought her eyes to him. It wasn’t even so much pain as it was unbearable pressure. Epidural my ass. With her tears clogging her nasal passage, she breathed heavily through her mouth and mentally apologized for blowing her breath in his face but couldn’t bring her mouth to compute anything to say to him other than, “I really can’t bring myself to like you right now,” she told him watching him creak a smile a onto his lips and shaking her head she lightly laughed as he pressed his lips to her cheek, and moved his hand down to her belly.

Looking back at the doctor who noticed the two weren’t paying attention to him, she nodded at him and took in a huge breath and pushed lowly through her stomach and could feel the pressure building once more. All sound in the room began to disappear from her, she looked through slit eyes to the doctor and then up at him next to her as she began to feel some sort of relief, but she kept pushing. Looking back to the doctor she watched him scoot forward on his chair and nod, bringing his hands down between her legs.

With another final push and a heavy breath, through the silence she heard it. The feeling washed over her as she threw her head back for a moment looking at the ceiling. As the cries rang throughout the air, she closed her eyes with a light smile on her lips as two more tears slipped down her cheeks. Turning her head to him, she watched his face go expressionless as he watched the doctors take the newborn into a bundle of blankets and clean him off. He laughed, his face going from zero to joy in a matter of nanoseconds. Smiling easily, she watched as he turned to her, his smile surpassing her own so much so that she was sure he was going to start jumping up and down like he himself was a child. Taking another breath in, she inched her body up on the bed a bit trying to ignore the soreness that was already beginning to sink in.

“Hey,” her gaze turned to the man beside her, eyelids growing heavy, “I love you,” he told her as his thumb smoothed over the skin of the hand that he never untangled from.

Smiling still she looked over his face admiring the small amount of scruff that had taken residence over his jawline. The last couple weeks were hectic for him and she knew he didn’t have time or the patience to shave like he’d been saying he wanted to. His eyes held bags underneath them from the lack of sleep of the past week. Between his physical therapy, and her restlessness at night neither one of them had gotten much sleep, “I sure hope so, that shit was as close to death as I could be,” she told him and watched as he merely shook his head at her. Hearing the doctors coming back over to them from the other side of the nursery, she shook his hand incase in hers to gain his attention again. Motioning him closer to her, she placed her hand on his face and brought their lips together softly when he was close enough. It was a simple kiss, their lips lingering a little longer than needed against each other’s in a bliss that was like they’d never imagined. With their lips merely centimeters apart, she whispered her profession to him before they both turned to welcome their son.

Caden Leon Oberg.