Lift

Chapter Forty Nine- Hold On

Authors note: I wrote the first 340 words stoned off my ass at 2am so...bear with me.
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Roy Walker, for the first time in a century, was not the one dying. Instead as he clutched his blood covered wife as she fell limp in his arms, he unfroze with a start and clung MacKenzie's body to him as he urgently wheeled her to the front door with one arm. The panic tricked him into thinking it took hours; it wasn't even a minute.

MacKenzie came in and out of consciousness as Roy began to cross the threshold. There was minimum damage to the outside of the house, and debris scattered the road. Roy looked around frantically for a neighbor or passing car.

"Please, Kenz. Hang in there. I don't-I don't know what to do."

Her arms were around Roy's shoulders as she weakly repeated: "I don't know what to do."

This baby was going to COME OUT, and MacKenzie was far too weak from the bleeding and horrific labor pains to do nothing but adjust herself into comfort inducing spots on Roy's lap.

Now that Dade and Whit were gone, Roy had a decision to make. Take her to the hospital himself or stay and call the doctor to come to the house.

"I love you."

And all at once, Roy blacked out. His eyes were sunken and dark. Wild, wild eyes. Nobody home. What was funny about Roy's inclination to knock himself out or faint, it did not always end badly, even when he didn't remember what exactly happened at the fine. Without fail, there was always a cataclysmic reaction.

Roy learned later MacKenzie hemorrhaged as the placenta separated; childbed fever and toxemia. Roy had rang the on call doctor, and to his surprise, had a response from the secretary informing him the doctor was three houses down from Roy checking over the elderly woman who's house was nearly destroyed from the tornado. With that information, the midwife was also called.

"Please let me see her," Roy insisted as the door to their own bedroom was hurried closed, the midwife and doctor paying no mind, as if he was another thing in their way, and not someone's husband. "Please listen to me." He wanted to bang on the door, scream, kick it down, set the door on fire, set the world on fire, for his wife and their baby.

"Roy, please." He heard his mother's voice in a swirl of pounding hearts and ringing ears. "She'll know what to do."

You know what to do, Roy thought, and opened the door of the bedroom to his bloodied wife on their bed, legs spread wide, eyes rolling back and mouth agape. The color looked like it had been sucked out of her mouth and her hair was plastered to her face.

Roy was frozen, he thought he might even piss out of this intense emotion he could not recognize.  He couldn't speak, he couldn't make words or convey the fireworks of fight or flight that were set off in his brain. Roy wrung his hands in defeat before the doctor finally noticed him and irritatedly said, "Mr. Walker, I told you not to come in here." He gestured to the midwife, "Please get him out of here. Now."

MacKenzie groaned and grabbed the midwife's wrist. "GIVE ME MY HUSBAND."

"Sh-she knows what to do," Roy said.

And there she was, awake and slightly alert. The color had come back to her pallid cheeks and her tired, blue eyes glistened like marbles. And another human being, a person, a part of Roy, a part of his wife, lay sleeping beside her in a bassinet, swaddled in white.

On August 9th at 12:45 am, MacKenzie gave birth to the tiniest little boy at home, with Roy dry heaving by her side. Yes, she was alive, her baby was alive, and Roy was barely breathing...

Adam Enoch Walker.

"That's a biblical name. Don't give him a biblical name," Roy's first response made MacKenzie roll her eyes and Roy bit his tongue.

MacKenzie had survived a traumatic labor and no, Roy hadn't thought of any name for his child because he was not exactly sure how to parent; yet.

And she assured him Adam Enoch was her late brother's name.

Roy remembered from the very beginning how offended MacKenzie had gotten at any manifested idea Roy might've had about taking his own life, and he respected her for it now.

So he signed the birth certificate; And Adam Enoch Walker was what they named their son.

"Oh my god. He looks just like you." MacKenzie grinned as she held her baby boy close to her chest.

"No he doesn't," Roy insisted. "Should I hold him?"

"Should you? Do you know how to be a human?"

"I just don't want to drop him."

"Well, the bedding needs to be changed, I need to wash up-"

"I'm not letting you wash up alone, you just gave birth. You could've died, MacKenzie."

"And you can't be afraid of your baby forever."

"I'm not afraid of my baby, I just don't want to drop him."

"Mr. Walker," the midwife insisted, "your mother has already volunteered to assist your wife. I promise you..."

"Here," MacKenzie said. "Take him."

Take him. As if fatherhood was suddenly thrusted into his arms. This tiny swaddled dumpling that did kind of look just like him; but Adam looked much more like his mother. He didn't know anything of this world, of the conflict in Europe, or where his father came from. Not right now, not just yet. Right now it was just the two of them. Something so great. An entire life and its endless timelines multiplying before his eyes.