Page 71 of Knocked up By the Minotaur

Nine Months Later

“Drugs,” Grace grits, breath labored, jaw clenched tightly and neck straining as she throws her head back into the pillow beneath her. “Drugs. Now. Get them in me right now.”

I come up beside her on the hospital bed, trying to offer her my hand for support, but she bats me away angrily and repeats her call for drugs.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor at her feet says, as nurses flurry around the room. “You dilated too quickly, I’m afraid it’s much too late for—”

Grace lets out a long, angry war cry as she bears forward and pushes without being told to, and the four-armed doctor raises his dark blue eyebrows in shock. “You’re, ah, crowning, in fact. Nurse!”

The room is bustling with activity, the doctors and nurses’ movements a blur to me as they prepare for the arrival of our baby. Grace’s face is flushed with effort and beaded with sweat. I wish there was something I could do to help her. My gut is clenching up at the sounds she’s making, at the pain she’s in.

“Grace, my love, you’re doing so well,” I murmur, wiping at her brow with a cool, damp cloth. Her hair is up in a messy bun, strands slick against her sweaty forehead, and I do my best to wipe them out of her eyes and sooth her.

She grabs angrily at the cloth and hurls it across the room.

“You,” she seethes at me, snatching at the collar of my shirt and pulling me close. “You had to go and put your giant fucking baby in me, didn’t you?”

I chuckle helplessly, my body a swirl of worry and awe and pride for my mate. “Sorry?”

“Don’t laugh!” She grabs the pillow behind her head, I presume to whack me in the face with, but then her eyes roll back and her jaw clenches in pain.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she moans, reaching for my hand, which I immediately give her. “Oli, shit, I can’t…”

She squeezes down against my fingers painfully.

“You can,” I say, letting her tear my hand to shreds. “You’re the strongest person I know, love. You can do this, I’ll be right here with you the entire way.”

Another contraction hits, and when the doctors tell her to push, she does so, baring forward until she suddenly kicks out at everyone’s reaching hands and comes up onto her hands and knees.

We all reshuffle to accommodate her new position, as she moans in pain and drops her head between her elbows.

“I’m so proud of you, darling,” I chant, as I reach out to thread my fingers over her hand clenched in the sheets. “So proud, you’re doing wonderfully.”

Time seems to stretch and compress all at once. My world becomes Grace’s moans of pain and cries of anger, until finally, what might be hours or days or mere minutes later, the room fills with the sound of a baby wailing.

I suck in a shaky breath as I move back and let the doctor place the most fragile little creature I’ve ever seen against Grace’s chest, and she sobs with relief and happiness.

“It’s a girl,” the doctor quietly announces, and Grace sniffles and runs her finger lightly over the tiny little thing’s forehead.

My daughter. I have a flesh and blood daughter, with a scrunched human face and brown, tufted little minotaur ears.

“You know, now that I’m holding her,” Grace says, her voice wavering with exhaustion and emotion, “she doesn’t look so big, does she?”

Her skin is wet and shiny and slightly blue, with little smears of blood all over her, but I reach my hand out to touch my baby’s back anyway.

So soft. So tiny and… and easy to break. I feel a lump in my throat as I run one finger up and down her spine.

“She’s beautiful,” I whisper, my voice choked with emotion.

Ella chuckles. “She’s a squished little raisin and I love her. She’s perfect.”

When the doctor takes her away to clean her up, I do my best to help Grace do the same.

“We should really decide on a name,” she murmurs, pushing herself up against the pillows once more stacked behind her back. “My list is still only getting longer, instead of shorter, but—here, pass me my phone. I can…”

“Hope,” I say suddenly, staring across the room as the doctor brings my little one back. “We could call her Hope.”

Grace stills beside me, and when the nurse moves to put the baby down in the clear crib at our side, Grace makes a motion to indicate me, and suddenly I’m holding her in my arms, and I freeze up.

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