Page 73 of The Virgin's Baby
Looking a little put out, Ransom ran his hand over his face. “Shit.”
And with his one word, I burst into tears. “Sorry for messing up your night, Ransom Whitaker!”
“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered as he got on his knees by the bathtub. “I didn’t mean it like that.” His hands ran over my head to try to comfort me. “You shouldn’t cry over this. I really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, hon.”
“I know,” I whimpered. Then a full-on wave of nausea hit me, and I leaped up out of the tub and to the toilet.
“Oh, shit!” Ransom shouted as he got up to get out of my way. Holding my hair back for me, he was a real trooper as I barfed my guts out. “Looks like you’ve got the virus too. God, I hope I don’t get it.”
My head felt terrible, my body ached, and I knew I was done for. Gasping for air, I cried, “Why me?”
Ransom got a towel, wrapped me up in it, and picked me up to carry me to bed. “I’ll take good care of you, little momma. Don’t you worry about a thing.” Tucking me into bed, he kissed my forehead. “No nooky tonight.”
I couldn’t recall ever feeling so badly so dang quickly. “No, no nooky, babe.”
It was crazy how quickly I’d fallen asleep. My dreams were out of this world too. Monkeys were everywhere, then the kids and I were all running, screaming as they chased us. Somewhere in there, a lion roared, scaring us nearly to death.
The room was dark when I woke up. And Ransom wasn’t in bed. I got up and found my robe then went to see what he was up to. I heard his voice before I opened the bedroom door.
“She’s sick too. This is reminding me of how hard it was to take care of the triplets when we brought them home.”
I leaned my forehead on the door, knowing that my husband was second-guessing the new baby I wanted. And maybe he was right to be doing that.
Life was chaotic once we brought the premature babies home. Thankfully, his grandfather was well enough to help with them. If we hadn’t had him, we would’ve been forced to hire a nanny.
I’d been weak back then, too, and not much help at first. Ransom had to pick the babies up when they woke up and bring them to me for me to feed them.
All the plans of breastfeeding went out the window after only three weeks of trying to get them all fed properly. It just wasn’t happening the way we’d planned.
And now I felt like maybe we’d jumped the gun with this fourth baby thing. Here I was, sick, and so were the kids. What had I been thinking that we could add on another baby?
Just as that went through my head, my stomach lurched, and I had to run to the bathroom. I’d thought my stomach had to have been empty after the last session of puking. I’d been wrong.
If I got pregnant, then throwing up would become a thing that happened to me a lot. I’d forgotten how horrible that really was.
Nope, I did not want to have a baby any longer. I vowed to tell Ransom as soon as I saw him.
Ransom
Lubbock, Texas – September 20th
Lightning crackled through the sky as we rode to the hospital. Grandad had stayed behind to watch the other three kids. He’d told us that he didn’t need to be around for this birth since the kids needed watching.
Aspen had decided that she wasn’t ready to have another baby yet. But she was too late. When we went to the doctor after Aspen didn’t get over the virus, but the kids did, we found out that she was pregnant. A few months later we found out that we’d most likely gotten pregnant in late December.
When labor started up on September the twentieth, Aspen looked it up and started laughing. “I was right!”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “About what?”
She ran her hand over her swollen tummy that housed identical twin girls. “About that first time we had sex to get pregnant. I’d thought to myself that we were pregnant then. I’d been right. The calculations show that if we had gotten pregnant on the date of our anniversary, December twenty-eighth, then today would be the due date. And here we are, in full labor.”
“And you went and second-guessed having these little twin angels only a little over a month later. I hope they don’t hold that against you, baby.” I had to laugh as we pulled up to the hospital. “That rain is about to start falling. Should I run in and get a wheelchair, or can you make it?”
She got out of the car without answering me. “Come on, Ransom. I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time.”
“Baby, all we had was time with the triplets,” I reminded her as I went around the car to put my arm around her to help her inside.
“This time it’s going to be different. I can tell.” She leaned against me as we had to stop while a contraction hit her. “Ow!”
