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8 AM
"Are you sure you're not gonna pop?" Sam's eyeing Fiona like a ticking hydrogen bomb while he holds a pair of binoculars to his eyes and takes large bites from his pastrami sandwich.
"I'm fine," Fiona insists, rubbing the small of her back. Her finger twitches against the trigger of her gun with an alarmingly regular rhythm. Every twenty minute she squeezes the hilt.
Sam pushes down the arm rest..
Fiona grunts. "Are you going to be a perfect ass about this?"
"Only if you're going to be a stubborn pain-in-the-ass."
"That would be your job."
The cell com crackles to life. "Kids, quit fighting."
"We're not fighting, dad." Sam relishes that description of Michael – it won't be too long before they'd be using it without irony.
"Fi? How are you holding up?"
"Bloody hell," Fi mutters, rubbing her lower back.
"Sam?"
"She's got…"
"Indigestion," Fiona interrupted. "And a little bit of pain in my lower back. I'm fine."
"Is the baby still moving?"
She winces. "More than ever. If I didn't know better I would testify that there are two in there."
"It LOOKS like you have two in there," Sam mumbles uncharitably.
"Sam," Michael warns.
"She told my my shirt looks like someone puked on it," Sam complains.
"It does," Michael says, seemingly bored with the silly argument between them.
"Low blow, Mike." Sam turns toward Fi to make an off-color joke about Michael's taste in clothing when he notices how still she is, how strange her expression is, and how wet the seat has grown.
"Take me to hospital, Sam." Fiona says.
The keys are already in the ignition.
***
9:50 AM
Sam somehow gains the honor of filling out an endless ream of paperwork while Michael goes upstairs to watch over Fi. Every ten minutes, Sam will text them a question; every few seconds Michael will text Sam back an answer. Spies may not have the paper trail of an average citizen, but they still need to have proof of insurance, even if it's falsified.
Fiona is uncommonly calm. Michael watches her lightly-muscled body strain as she labors, resting in her borrowed bed, waiting for the doctor.
She's measured and tested, and he says with some dismay, "only one centimeter dilated."
They'll leave her alone for a few hours, with the TV and the magazines and Michael and her pain, the drip of the IV and the rhythmic squeeze of her hand over his.
***
11 AM
"If it's a girl, we should call her Claire."
Michael soothes Fiona's lips with a chunk of ice. "Claire Westen." His lips twitch up into a smile. "Are you ready?"
Fiona's smile twists as a contraction rips through her. After the long wave of pain rips through her she says, "not yet. They're still ten minutes apart."
"They're getting closer together," he says. One eye's on her face, the other on the twin monitors hooked to mother and child. "Are you sure you don't want an epidural?"
She shakes her head. "The contractions less than a bullet through the shoulder."
"What does it feel like?"
"Do you honestly want to know?" she peers up at him through her sweaty bangs.
He watches her face as he says, "yeah."
"Like someone's trying to drive a circus train through my fanny."
Michael stops asking questions.
***
Twelve PM
"…But what did the pitocin do?" Sam's occupying an easy chair near the TV set, enjoying the game and throwing Fi a concerned look at her every anguished groan.
"Speed the contractions up," Fiona's attending nurse responds; she's a blonde girl with abundant curves and a great smile – naturally, Sam has spent the past ten minutes trying to get her number. "It brings them closer together."
Fiona's howls of pain bear that out as she curls up on her side, Michael awkwardly rubbing her back and shooting glances back over his shoulder toward the door.
"How much longer is this gonna take?" Sam asks.
"Probably another two hours. No more than three," she winces in sympathy as Fiona lets out another cry. "It hurts terribly at this stage, but there isn't anything we can do about it if she won't take meds."
"Fi's a stubborn gal," Sam explains. "Tougher than hell."
"She's got something a lot of girls her age don't have – good endurance."
Sam leans forward in his chair. "Speaking of endurance, it sounds like it'll be awhile before the kid gets here. Wanna waste a little time? I know a great little bar down the block…"
"Mr. Axe, I'm on duty…"
"And so is he," Michael says, "Sam, come here and rub Fi's back, I've got to make a call."
Fiona let out a feral snarl.
"Do you stock muzzles?" Sam asks.
"SAM," both Fi and Michael growl.
He smiles apologetically to the retreating back of the nurse. "You're still gonna be on in a couple of hours, right?"
The closed door offers a silent answer.
***
Two PM
She sits on a green medicine ball, holding onto Michael's shoulders while circling her hips. Sam has come and gone several times in pursuit of the nurse he'd been flirting with; hours have passed by in a moaning haze.
Fiona sits outside of it all, sealed in a world where there's nothing but her progressively worsening pain and the hope of a baby at the end of the tunnel. She is beyond the mortal world and yet entrenched in it. Michael might be a bag of flour, a bowl of sugar – he is momentarily unimportant.
He kneels before her. "Are you sure you don't want meds?"
She squeezes his shoulder, hard and quickly, giving him a taste of the searing pain she's undergoing.
***
Five PM
Doctor Phil's lecturing a couple of young hoodlums on the tv set. Every time he says 'y'all' Fi lets out a protracted moan.
Michael stares at her face, trying to provide a focal point for her breathing exercise but she's looking over his shoulder, into the cloudy sky, the bruised clouds, the pink setting sun.
When the doctor arrives, his face shows triumph. "You're ready to push, Ms. Glennane."
****
Six PM
"What do you want for dinner – a Hershey bar or a bottle of Fanta?"
Madeline frows over the top of her Cosmo. "Let's walk to the McDonalds down the block."
"It's too late for us to leave. If we do it now, we'll miss Mike and he'll wear out his fingers paging us."
Madeline smiles. "It's been a long time since I've had a baby around."
"Me too," Sam says.
"You have a kid, Sam?"
"Yeah – a girl. She probably doesn't know I'm alive. That's the way her mother wanted it."
Madeline frowns. "I'm sorry, Sam."
"Everything happens for a reason. At least I have a second chance with Mike and Fi's kid. We'll help each other out," Sam says. "Are you willing to change the diapers?"
She smiles. "You're going to burp him, then."
Sam grimaces at the notion, but he doesn't say no.
The door to labor and delivery opens, and Michael's standing there, sweaty-faced, smiling. "It's a boy."
THE END