The Fae Book 3: Butcher and Raine

A Very Mother's Day Epilogue (Raine): Don't Shoot

"Butcher...can we cut back on the little lightning display you've got going on?"

The lightning was nonstop outside the window of my hospital room, attesting to Butcher's unhappiness, and every contraction I had made those bolts of lightning flash even more violently.

My husband looked at me, those silver eyes stormy instead of their normal blank.

"You're in pain," he said, and his voice wasn't happy.

"All part of childbi – AAAGGHHH!" 

Those contractions were no joke and were steadily getting worse. I tried to remember my breathing but screw that. I was just happy to survive a contraction and not die from the pain.

Butcher held my hand through it, his other hand stroking my hair, then the second it was done, he stormed out of the room. Seconds later, he walked back in, carrying a doctor by the back of his scrubs, the man's feet dangling in the air.

He set the doctor down beside me, leaned down in the terrified man's face and said, "Stop. Her. Pain."

"I'm not her doctor and OB isn't my –"

"I don't fucking care whose doctor you are or what the fuck kind of doctor you are. You went to medical school, which means you know how to stop her pain so fucking fix this."

Three nurses and a doctor came rushing into the room, eyes wild, looking warily at Butcher. OK, forget softening that: they were looking at Butcher in sheer terror.

"Mr. Doyle," my real doctor said like he was trying to calm an enraged water buffalo, "can I help you?"

"Another one!" I said, and Butcher took my hand until it passed.

"I just want this fucker to fix my wife's pain." Butcher stabbed a finger at the doctor he'd carried in.

"He really can't –" my doctor started to say.

"He really can if he wants to live to see another day."

"Hypothetically," I hissed at Butcher.

"Hypothetically," Butcher said. "So fix the pain."

"This is my husband," one of the nurses interjected, talking rapidly in her nervousness. "He was just bringing me some lunch on his break because I forgot mine at home this morning. And he's a proctologist."

"Wrong hole," I muttered.

"We're done with you," Butcher said to the proctologist.

My doctor realized that, with the other doctor gone, Butcher's focus was now on him.

"You waiting for a fucking invitation?" my husband demanded. "Stop her pain."

"Incoming," I said, just before the next contraction took ahold. Butcher grabbed my hand, stroked my head, and it finally let up after about thirty hours or so.

"Nurse," the doctor said, "let's check Mrs. Doyle. See if maybe she's ready to push."

"Another one!" I alerted them in case they weren't watching the monitor. Butcher grabbed my hand.

"I want to push," I said after it subsided. Get this forty-pound child out of me. "I feel like I need to push."

"She shouldn't have to push," Butcher growled. "What the hell are you getting paid for if my wife has to do all the work?"

"Butcher," I warned him as his hand snaked toward the inside of his cut. "Kind of need the assist from them."

Fortunately, our second son, Maël, was born relatively quickly, but then we had another problem. Maël was yowling when he was born, angrily waving those little paws around. Butcher didn't do well with Alexandre crying and Maël was no different.

"Stop," Butcher said to him as he took him from the doctor and laid him on my chest. 

The doctor and nurses got wide-eyed with disbelief as they witnessed that instantaneous and miraculous cessation of noise as Maël immediately stopped. Butcher gently ran a monster hand over Maël's little back, his eyes on me.

"You OK, Raine?" I could translate that to Butcher-speak: I love you, Raine.

I beamed at him. "I'm fine. He's so perfect," I cooed. 

It looked like I had another mini-Butcher with all that dark hair, and I couldn't be happier.

After a few minutes, the nurse started hovering. "I, um, need to take the baby to weigh and...other things."

That put the fiercely protective predator on high alert. "What other things?" he snarled at her.

"Um, well, some drops in his eyes to protect them and um, we're going to...pokehisfootwithaneedle."

"You're going to do what to my son?"

"The heel stick screening..." she seemed to shrink in the face of Butcher's displeasure.

"They have to, Butcher," I intervened.

"I'll be holding his hand while you do this and watching you so if there's any problem and you make him cry, I'll make you cry –"

"Butcher!" Trying to rein in Butcher was arguably worse than childbirth.

Eventually, the heel stick and all of the other welcome-to-the-world indignities were over and Butcher was swaddling Maël and holding him so I could rest.

"Sleep, Raine," he demanded. "I've got our boy."

As sleep beckoned, I remembered something important. "Mon orage?"

"What is it, Raine?"

"Don't shoot anyone."

__________________________________________________________

Author's Note: Someone on the FB page said she'd always wished that we'd had a scene of Butcher in the delivery room, so I wrote this little epilogue. Oh, Butcher... ;-)