Patrick

“I love you, my wife,” he whispered.

She slept in between the contractions with Patrick quietly going crazy with the wait! He was advised by the doctor to go out in the waiting room for a little bit. “It’s taking too long,” he said tersely as he accepted the coffee his father handed him.

“First birth is usually the worst,” Claudia assured him as she patted his arm. She had come in as soon she heard.

“Not very reassuring,” he said as he sipped the coffee. It had started to get light out and he realized that they had been there for the past four hours and her water still refused to break.

He finished drinking the coffee and went back in just in time to see her awake. “I thought you had deserted me,” she told him with a smile as he came back by her side.

“Not a chance, you are stuck with me,” he told her with a faint smile.

But the journey was not going to be an easy one. He saw the look on the doctor’s face several hours later and knew something was wrong.

“I want you to rest now, Carrie, before we continue,” Doctor Whittingham told her with a smile as he got up.

“I will be back, my sweet,” Patrick said, kissing her brow tenderly.

He caught the man just as he was about to get something to drink. “What the hell is going on?” he asked, pulling at the doctor’s sleeve.

“I am going to go in manually and break the water. The labor is taking too long and it looks as if your son is breeched. It’s called a failure to progress,” he told Patrick frankly.

“What does that mean?” Patrick asked, trying not to panic.

“Every pregnancy presents its own risks, especially first time pregnancies, but I am going to do everything in my power to make sure your wife and child are okay,” the doctor said.

Patrick nodded, feeling the sick thudding of his heart. He could not lose them; surely the fates could not be so much against him! He felt the helplessness riding him and he felt like smashing something hard.

He went over to get some water to drink, trying to be calm before he went back into the room. He could not afford to let her see him like this.

He looked up from the machine and saw his father coming towards him.

“You look like hell,” he told him bluntly as he poured himself some water from the fancy carafe on the table. “They ought to get something stronger for extreme cases like these. How are you holding up?”

“What do you think?” Patrick asked him tersely, crushing the paper cup in his hand. “My wife is in labor for the past six hours with no baby in sight and the doctor is telling me that my son is breeched with that doomed look on his face.”

“Your mother went through a pretty long labor herself,” William told his son in sympathy.

Patrick looked at him sharply. “How long?”

“Twelve hours and thirty minutes,” he said grimly. “The longest period I had ever faced in my life.”

“What did you do?”

“I paced and wished I was anywhere except there.” He met his son’s eyes. “Holding you in my arms after all that was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“It will all be worth it when you hold that child in your arms, son. So, go in there and sit with your wife and help her get through it.”

He stared at his father for a moment and then turned to leave. “Thanks, Dad,” he said softly before hurrying away.

He went back into the room with renewed faith and a smile on his face. “Okay, baby, let’s do this.”

Their son was born late that afternoon, a bouncing healthy boy weighing eight pounds and three ounces with jet black hair and blue eyes and his mother’s nose and mouth. Patrick cried as he held his son in his hands and looked down at the replica of himself. Carrie fell asleep as soon as she was cleaned up, and Patrick took his son out in the waiting area to show him off to his parents and Carrie’s mother.

“He is gorgeous, darling!” Linda said, taking her grandson, the tears shimmering in her eyes as she looked down at him. He stared back up at her curiously before looking towards his father. “I swear he knows you already, Patrick,” she murmured.

“Of course he does.” He was so overcome he just wanted some privacy to express his emotions or wait until he was alone with Carrie.

“Congratulations, son,” his father said, clapping him on his back.

“Thanks, Dad.”

*****

“I think he is going to look even more handsome than you do,” Carrie told her husband later that night as he sat beside her on the bed and she held her son in her arms. She had just fed him a few minutes ago, and he was closing his eyes getting ready to sleep. Their parents had left to go home to get some sleep and would be back in the morning.