John and Marlena (Finally) Get a Q!

Chapter 134 - Truth, Lies, And The Shape Of Things To Come

Marlena groaned as another contraction rocked her. This was all wrong; it shouldn't be happening this fast, this early. She could feel someone attaching a cuff to her arm to check her blood pressure as the pain swelled inside her. Somewhere she could hear her own voice issue from dry lips, but somehow, she couldn't feel anything but the pain and the fear.

She could hear voices whirling around her, see shapes through the aching fog that pervaded her mind, and she knew intellectually that they were helping her. But somehow it made her panic surge as everything spiraled out of her control. This was wrong; she shouldn't have let it happen; she should have been able to stop it.

Even as the thought flitted through her mind, the pain seemed to wane slightly and she exhaled in long, slow breaths. She needed to focus, she knew that, needed to be able to hear the doctors and let them guide her. Reaching out, she encountered thin air and she dropped her hand wearily to the sterile covers of the gurney. She wasn't able to see John and it fostered her burgeoning anxiety when she couldn't find him.

John, where are you? I need you.

John, talking urgently to Lexie, turned in the middle of his sentence. It wasn't that he had physically heard Marlena say anything. But somehow, he felt her fear reaching out to him and gathering him in like icy fingers and he wasn't going to let her down again.

"I'm here baby, I'm here." She felt his hand curl around hers and she opened her eyes to find him sitting on the edge of the bed. It was as though the rest of the world had faded into a mass of colorless moving shapes, but still, his eyes were sharp and held her with a blue that echoed the color of a deepening dusk sky. The color reminded her of the sunsets they had watched in West Virginia, so calm and serene. But things had not gone smoothly even there. She was suddenly struck by how stubborn and selfish she had been. There had been no way to be sure that the baby was safe and yet she had savored the moments with John as if that hadn't mattered. She had been so happy just to be with him, she had grabbed the time irrespective of the possible danger she was putting her baby in. What kind of a mother did that make her?

She struggled for breath as another flash of panic crippled her. She had been simply lucky in West Virginia, but what if the baby had been hurt in the struggle? What if giving birth so early was an indication of the fact that there was something seriously wrong?

"Doc? Sweetheart, look at me," John was concerned by the sudden blankness that appeared in her gaze and he could sense the alarm within her. "Marlena," he squeezed her hand and cupped her cheek with a gentle palm. "Listen to me. You have to *focus*. Focus on me. Look at me, I'm here and I'm not leaving you."

Thankfully, she seemed to respond to his voice, and he felt her fingers return the pressure.

"That's my girl!" He gave her a little smile of relief. "How's the pain?"

"Okay," she nodded, her voice swamped by all the noise the bustle around them was creating. "What's happening?"

"They're waiting for Dr. Robbins to arrive," he said gently. "The baby is okay; they have a monitor on you and his heart is beating just fine."

"I'm scared John," tears trembled on her lashes. She didn't want to give into the fear, but it was overwhelming her. Somehow all she could think was that somehow, she was being punished for something, for her shortcomings as a mother and as a human being. Logically, she knew, it was silly, but her instincts and her panic were battling with her rationality at the moment and the fear was winning. "What if something happened to the baby when Kr-" Her voice turned traitor at that moment and she gulped a lungful of air.

"We have to have faith sweetheart," he brushed her cheek with his thumb. "We've done this before, remember? But this time we have all the experts around. Nothing is going to go wrong. Soon you're going to hold our little baby in your arms and you're going to feel his soft warm skin. Or *her* soft warm skin."