Solana grins happily. “It’s okay, sweetie. I have us covered.” She reaches once again into her giant bag and produces a small speaker. A moment later, soothing New Age music is playing. She holds my gaze over Mercedes’s head but addresses Mercedes. “Why is it the men are so big and strong while depositing their seed but go green when the time comes to reap what they sow?”

Mercedes looks up at me and laughs, then cries with the pain of a new contraction.

“Judge, go get her some ice chips. Go on. Out.”

I nod, grateful to Solana, and find Georgie outside. He takes one look at me, and I wonder if I look like he does. Pale and completely out of our element.

“Ice chips?” I ask him. Why do I ask him?

“Ice chips. Yes. I’ll ask a nurse.” He goes to the station, and I see how his hair is ruffled, and he must have pulled clothes on over top of his pajamas. I look down at myself. I am wearing jeans and a shirt that’s wrinkled from Mercedes twisting it and from me sleeping in it. I wanted to be ready to go, so I’ve been sleeping fully dressed for the past week. Mercedes laughed at the idea.

A nurse returns with Georgie. She takes a look at me and grins knowingly. “Here you go. Your wife will be grateful for these.”

“Thank you,” I say, taking the cup. “You coming?” I ask Georgie wondering why the fuck I’m asking him. Almost as though he’d be my ally.

“Hell no. I hear her fine from out here.”

The nurse chuckles, and I reenter the room where, over the next few hours, Mercedes goes through what I can imagine to be horrific pain without agreeing to the epidural I would have taken hours ago. I know she’s hoping for a natural birth without a C-section, which may not be possible with twins. But I don’t know why I even think that when I hear the first little cry of a brand-new voice. Because if anyone can do this, can bend fate to their will, it’s my wife.

And as Ariana is handed to me while the doctor attends to her brother, I feel my own eyes well with emotion.

Lawson joins us just moments later, and it’s as though he’s searching for his sister, desperate to be reunited with her because he wails, his little face bright pink with anger until they are weighed, wiped down, and swaddled, then laid on their mother’s breast where he worms his spindly little arm out of the swaddle to lay his hand on his sister’s cheek.

It’s only then they quiet. And fuck. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.

29

Judge

Several months later