His Choice (The Selection)

Epilogue 3

Wrote by firerose11

This chapter is told from Charles's point of view.  I didn't think you wanted to read about childbirth.  You can thank me later.

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I paced the floors so much during those first hours that I was sure that I was going to wear a hole straight through the tiles.

"Charles, come sit down," my mom said calmly where she was curled up next to my dad.  "It's not going to help anyone if you continue to tread the same patch of floor."

"Oh, dear, let the boy pace.  I was the same way with you, and I didn't even have the added worry of our child being early," my dad answered, patting her hand.

Right, I had forgotten what I was so concerned about for a minute, which was the whole point of my mindless exercise.  However, with his words, everything came flooding back.

Ember had woken up in the middle of the night a month ago with extreme pain rushing through her.  We were both worried that it had something to do with the baby, so I had thrown a few things into a bag.

Despite my wife's reassurances that everything was going to be fine even if we just stayed in Albin, I insisted on taking her back to the palace.

The whole plane ride, I had sat next to Ember, her hand clenched tightly in mine and her face screwing up at infrequent intervals.  I was concerned at any moment that this baby was going to decide to make its appearance, and I would be no help to either of them.

Ember, while worried, was less so than me.  Between pains, she calmly informed me that as long as her water didn't break, it was unlikely that the baby would be born this early.

She threw a fit when I won't let her walk off the plane.  The whole time I was carrying her to the car, she was spouting off some nonsense about how it wasn't going to change anything if I let her walk and that I was making her regret marrying me.

I ignored it all.  That last part stung a little though.

Long story short: turns out I was right to carry her.  The doctor managed to stop the premature labor but firmly told Ember that she was on bed rest.

She tried to argue with him while I tried to get him to explain to me in normal talk, not medical jargon, what exactly was going on.

Ember failed to convince him, and I failed to understand what was wrong.

After that whole complicated mess, I felt obligated to call Karigan and let her know what was going before asking her if she could handle the kids for a while.

It wasn't a problem for her, but I had to deal with making sure that Ember didn't try to escape the confines of her sentence.  She was pretty sneaky for a pregnant lady.

Anyway, here we were a month later with our kid being born a week or two early rather than more than a month.  I'm still not sure about how I feel.

"I'm surprised it took the two of you so long to start having kids," Dad remarked.

"Maxon," Mom scolded, "we discussed this before, and I'm refusing to pester Charles about it at this moment."