Chapter Twenty-Four
Cory
The last few months flew past—well they didn’t fly. I got bigger and bigger every day until it practically took a forklift to get me down to breakfast. We still had a couple of weeks to go before my official due date, but the Braxton Hicks contractions had been happening off and on, and I’d had to talk the guys out of rushing me to the hospital every time.
They’d begun to take turns hovering over me. When Levi was on call or shift, Ben worked from home and vice versa. When I insisted I was perfectly fine and that no place in Mapleville was more than ten minutes away, they brushed aside my comments and went on scheduling their time as if I was no more capable of being left alone than Tobias.
Our little man spoke in full sentences now, although he still said no more than anything else. And he was very excited about having a new baby in the family. He wouldn’t nap unless I lay down with him and let him cuddle my belly and sing to the little one. The new baby would emerge an expert in “Itsy Bitsy Piders.” Of course, we all thought Tobias was a genius, even if he didn’t have perfect pronunciation.
Having an alpha always at hand made it easier for me to work on my thesis. Dr. Elder was the best advisor possible, cleansing my soul of the pain I’d endured under my previous mentor. I would have loved to TA for him, but my increasing size and upcoming due date made it impossible. Still, I managed to take on some administrative tasks for him, most at home, but a few hours a week in the office that I loved, since it allowed me to get to know the other department personnel. I’d never realized how Grieke isolated himself, and his students from everyone else until now.
Another reason I welcomed the office time was that my alphas didn’t follow me there. I loved them. Hell, I adored them, but as my due date came closer they watched me like I might explode. My nerves needed the break.
Before I knew it, the time came to defend my thesis. Even with all my hard work, I’d never have been able to succeed without my advisor. He pointed out a number of problems with my logic and guided me in the right direction while never making me feel like he was forcing my hand. He encouraged me, rather, to find my own solutions offering gentle nudges where needed.
Standing in front of the panel in my black slacks, along with a crisp white shirt and gleaming black loafers, I made my oral presentation with confidence and pride. I’d gained so much of that recently. I spoke for about twenty minutes, hitting the high points, but they’d all read the actual document, and their questions, instead of tensing me up as they would have only a year before, were an opportunity to share more about an area of study I found exciting. This, I thought, was how it should be. What a change.
I hadn’t told my alphas, but I’d come close to withdrawing long before Grieke confronted me with that folder. Only their love and support had given me the courage to press on. To follow my dreams. I’d spend the rest of my life loving them back.
They didn’t let me bring guests for the event, of course, but a week later, when I stood in line wearing a black gown with blue velvet trim signifying my degree draped with all the other regalia, the audience held not only my alphas and our son, perched on my mother’s lap, but my dad and all my siblings along with a few of their significant others. The enthusiastic rabble had arrived the day before and were scattered between us and all our friends because nobody could possibly fit all of them. The only reason we’d managed to get them all tickets to graduation was that my mother had gone to school with the university president. She had no qualms about reminding him how she’d helped him with a certain paper...as in wrote it for him. They were having dinner the next day to reminisce.
As I stepped onto the stage, they cheered. It sounded like a pep rally, but my concern at that point was more for the intense cramping that threatened to double me up. They’d started before dawn, and hiding them from my alphas was a challenge only graduation could give me the fortitude to pull off. I’d worked too long, my entire family had come a long way...and I was walking those boards even if I had to pause to deliver the baby halfway across.
That sounded possible while showering and dressing a few hours earlier, when the pains were a half hour apart, but now they were coming one atop the other with almost no time in between...I might indeed be about to treat the audience to the sight of me lying on my back pushing a baby out. That would be on YouTube in seconds. And the evil uploader would likely be one of my siblings.
I breathed in and out, slowly. I just had to pause at the center of the platform, receive my hood and the folder that would hold my doctorate when it was mailed to me, shake hands with a few people, and smile for a picture then head for the other steps and down. I clutched my phone in my pocket, the message already typed and ready to text.
Baby coming. Meet me at the car.
So far, I was doing it. Hood on, shake hands. Folder received, shake hands. University president, shake hands. My couthless brothers and sisters roared, clapped, and stomped their feet. An air horn hooted. Guest speaker, shake...everything went black and spun.
The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by the twenty or so people who were there to cheer me on. Ben and Levi lifted me and carried me off the stage followed by everyone else. As we moved out the back door, I heard Mom’s old friend tell everyone where we were going and more applause rocked the house.
“You sure made an impression, son,” Dad told me, holding the car door while the guys poured me inside.
I moaned. “Now they’ll never want me on the faculty after a spectacle like that. They’ll be afraid my whole family will show up and ruin every solemn occasion. Air horns? Really?”
Dad chuckled. “I don’t think it’s your brothers horn that they will remember. I think it’s your going into labor right there in front of everyone. But not in a bad way, son.” He kissed my forehead. “A new life coming into the world is never a bad thing.”
From then on it was a whirlwind. Everyone piled into cars and rocketed onto the main road. I heard a siren and Levi, who was driving, threw over his shoulder to me that my mom had gotten one of the local police who was working a side job directing graduation traffic to clear the way to the hospital. At least my crazy family would be going home in a few days and town could go back to normal. A professor—even a beginning one—needed a certain amount of dignity in his life.
I moaned again, but not because of the dog-and-pony show that was my life. The pains had me panting and scared. What if something was wrong? Had I hurt the baby by forcing the issue and going through with graduation? It had seemed important at the time, but was it? Nothing was more important than the little one inside me and our son. In the seat next to me, Tobias offered me his sippy cup, and I tried my best to pull it together.
I didn’t want to scare him, so I tried to smile, but another pain ripped from deep within me and I whimpered.
Tobias’s little brow creased.
“I-I’m okay, T-man. We’re going…going to have the baby.”
“Baby,” he said with great satisfaction and took a deep drink. “Tobias’s baby.”
“That’s right,” Ben told him from the front passenger seat. “You’ll be the best big brother ever.”
“Baby.”
After another long while, we got to the hospital, a string of cars led by the police officer on his motorcycle with siren and lights, and everyone piled out and paraded behind my wheelchair into the building. We filled the elevators, but at the maternity ward, a nurse barred the door. “Patient only for a few minutes, while we see what’s what. Then we’ll come get the other daddies. The rest of you...I hope the waiting room will hold you.”
She buzzed the doors and wheeled me inside. Within five minutes, they determined I should go right to delivery, and Levi and Ben were brought in. And Mom. After delivering an even dozen, she wasn’t going to let her first grandbaby arrive without her presence. And, although the alphas were on either side of me holding my hands the whole time, the child in me found Mom’s presence in a chair across the room very comforting.
As the baby started to emerge, she stood and moved to stand behind the doctor and a little off to the side. “Did you want a boy or a girl, Son?” she asked when the last bit of baby was in the doctor’s hands and the nurse was holding the scissors out to my alphas.
“I...don’t care. As long as it’s healthy.” Drenched in sweat, exhausted, and trembling slightly, I blinked back tears. “Is it okay?”
“Tell him, Grandma.” Levi winked at her.
“It’s a beautiful, perfect little girl,” she said, lower lip trembling and eyes shining. “I’m so proud of you.”
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Well...the doctor and nurses were fine. But the people I loved were all in tears. Including our new daughter, Calla, named after Mom. Hollering and kicking. I held my arms out for her and cuddled her close to me, feeling so blessed and happy and tired.
“Nice job, Dr. Reeves,” Levi murmured, stroking the sweet little face of our daughter.
“Dr. Reeves,” Ben said. “What a day.”