If I Lie : Book 2

82. Preggers Can't be Choosers pt. 1

TW: Just the usual mom stuff, you know. Also the title served as a joke on the saying "Beggers Can't Be Choosers", enjoy!

Ashley POV

2:00 AM

My water broke when I was giving my wife a bath, like when you know you've had your period. I was washing Eliza's feet when fluid suddenly burst between my legs, like a Tide pod, not at all like a water balloon. 

I looked down when I noticed. One would argue, for as many people we had in the house and help that were at the use of Joss' discretion, I still did all these things alone with Eliza because I wanted to while I was able to muster that strength, even as it was advised not to from Ellis. Naturally, I called out. 

"HELP!" I screamed, my voice blaring, not braced for the impact of things that were about to happen to me. What was to come? I was giving birth. In the process of it, anyway. Fuck. Fuck me. Fucking me is what got me here, this is how our daughter came to be and it didn't happen once, the rape. It happened more than I cared and yet unlike those other women who got rid or threw those poor unwanted children into corners of darkness, I was not like them. I could never be like this, I had not the heart to be so cruel, even when I had the mind to give away or scrape out what was not fashionable, reasonable to me and my life, I still did it and I love all my children, every last one. Never could it be their fault, not mine either, if you think about it. Their fathers, the people who made their way through me, without regard or apology, were sober-minded and did this to me.

I am not meat. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. An artist. This was not a bad dream, it is very much real and happening, none of which I may take back. Eliza? Eliza forgive me. 

In the past three days since Eliza joined us all again, her voice had significantly improved. "Is it happening? Now?" Eliza shot me a glare, a vividly mournful and dark one. Resentment was the name of the game, but not for me or for our child. Herself. She'd been harboring some shame and feelings of insignificance when she was made away by Dr. Lynch and Dr. Harvey that she was paralyzed, she knew this would mean I'd be raising and holding our daughter mostly myself. She felt inadequate and I hated this for her, alongside her. 

I nodded and then looked at her, my brows furrowed feeling the same emotions of inadequacy for the reason I could not take away her experience with our baby on the way. I rushed to her side, soothing her fears. Maybe mine should have been soothed but I didn't feel that way, I felt alarmingly calm despite the fact in a few short hours or maybe a day from now I'd either push our daughter out or she'd have to be cut out from me, this should have scared me but second time around mothering and being pregnant with all the hell this year has been, this should be a cake walk.

"Yes, yes but I can promise you this will be the chance we do things right. Don't worry about me or what everything will look like from now. Just be here with me, okay? I need you. I'm going to need you a lot. I can't do this alone," I tell her, my voice shaking visibly. If you asked me, Eliza made it back as if on queue, to be here for this birth. No part of me wanted to imagine all of this without her. 

She scoffed playfully. "Where else will I go? I'm here." Eliza wills herself up to meet my lips. 

"Ms. Black, is everything alright?" A red-headed nurse asks. This is one of the nurses from Eliza's care team staff utilized in her night-time rotation, she dashes in with messy hair as though she'd been resting her head against a wall trying to catch a few seconds of sleep. 

"I am having my baby. Now. Get Dr. Ellis on call, and tell her she needs to come. Get my staff to set up the pool." I shot orders toward the girl, removing myself from Eliza to stand off my knees.