40
“You’re going to have to deliver our baby, Bilaal.”
He knew she was right just by looking at her. Her face was contorted in pain, swollen with discomfort. She was already gasping as she did that rapid-fire breathing, and he grabbed a pillow and shoved it behind her lower back as she leaned against the wooden headboard of their bed. He put another pillow under her knees, and she appeared to get some relief as she leaned back and continued to breathe hard.
“Women have given birth without hospitals and doctors for millions of years,” Irene said through her measured breaths. “We’ve lived off the grid for almost a year. We can do this.”
“Easy for you to say,” said the Sheikh, kneeling on the bed beside her, his hands bent at the elbows, palms upturned like he was waiting to catch a falling baby.
“Um, excuse me?” she snorted, her eyes wide as she glared at him and then looked down at herself. “I think I’ve got the hard part here.”
The Sheikh frowned and pulled at his beard so hard he could feel sharp stabs of pain all over his face. The pain was good, he thought. Clarifying. Now if only he could get some damn clarity on how to deliver a baby.
“Bathtub,” Irene gasped, blowing out as she exhaled, her hands on her belly, her eyes wide and bugged out. “Fill it with warm water, and help me there.”
The Sheikh blinked and then immediately took action, racing to the bathroom and placing the stopper, running both hot water taps at full blast, testing the temperature to make sure it wouldn’t scald her. He ran back out to Irene, but she waved him away like she needed a bit of physical space.
“Check on Sage,” she groaned. “Then come back to me.”
The Sheikh nodded and raced to the door, calling his son’s name until the boy replied from the living room. He seemed alive. Good enough. Now back to the wife. Ya Allah, what was he thinking by listening to her! He should be calling the goddamn paramedics, the Navy SEALS, and the United Nations to help his wife!
“I am back, my love,” he said, rushing back to her side and stroking her hair gently. She was sweating, and the Sheikh grabbed a clean towel and mopped her brow, dabbed her cheeks, all the while stroking her hair.
“That feels nice,” she muttered as she tried to tilt her head back and look at him. “Keep doing that. I think we have some time.”
“How much time?” the Sheikh asked, glancing over at that phone on the far table. Why had he not already called every emergency number in North America right now?! Was he mad?
“Not enough time for that,” she said, smiling weakly and reaching for his wrist, as if she could physically stop him. “Please, Bilaal. Just do what I say, and we’ll be fine. Come on. Breathe with me. In. Out. In. Out.”
The Sheikh started to breathe in time with his wife, and they stayed like that for almost twenty minutes, silently matching one another breath for breath. A strange calm fell over them, and the Sheikh exhaled smoothly and then glanced down at his smiling wife.
“You knew that you had gotten pregnant a month before you told me. You lied to me. Yes?”
She nodded without hesitation, without losing that smile, without forsaking that sense of calm that was enveloping them in the midst of the chaos. “Yes,” she said.
“Why?”
Irene sighed, but she stayed quiet.
“Speak, Irene! Why?” He paused, the color draining from his face and then rushing back in. “By God, did you want to have the baby here? So that . . . so that you’d be able to convince me to stay longer? Stay away from the world longer? Was that your plan?”
Irene closed her eyes and held his arm firmly. She kissed his hand, and then looked into his eyes. “Yes. Because I knew what going back meant, Bilaal. I knew it from the beginning. I knew it would mean murder, because I didn’t think I would be able to stop you from killing that other brother once we went back to the world. So I thought the only chance I had was for us to never go back to the outside world, which meant that I had to make sure to have the baby here, as a surprise. This way you wouldn’t have time to call for help or take me to a hospital. Then once the baby was here, there would be no fixed deadline to return, since we wouldn't need a hospital. This way maybe we do stay here for a while longer. Maybe forever.” Her expression softened, and tears welled in her bloodshot eyes. “If we don’t go back, then perhaps you would never need to kill another man. Everyone gets to live. That’s how this gets sorted out using love instead of violence. Do you see?”
The Sheikh shook his head like a dog in the rain. He blinked hard and tried to make sense of what she’d just said. “I see that you are a convoluted, twisted, ridiculous woman. You risked your own life and the life of our unborn child for a chance to save the life of a man you’ve never met and probably will never meet. A man who in all likelihood deserves to die a horrible, painful death for even thinking about doing anything to my niece. That is not love, Irene. It is lunacy. It is madness.”
“Love is madness!” Irene shouted, digging her nails into his forearm so hard it drew blood. “Look at everything that’s happened in our lives over the last four years! It was love that caused all of this! Love in its many forms! It was your love for Dan that brought you to Wyoming. It was my love for my horse that brought me riding out in the rain where I found you. It was sexual love that brought our bodies together that night. It was your fatherly love that brought you back to me and your son. It was protective love for your niece that made you decide to disappear from the world even though you knew it would cause her sorrow.” She touched his face, and he felt the love surge through him like her fingers were charged with the divine spirit. “And it is the complex, wonderful love of man, woman, and child that’s going to see us through this, Bilaal. The most fundamental of all human emotion: the love that holds a family together.”
“Mommy,” came the cry from outside the bedroom door, and the Sheikh immediately turned and prepared to have Sage go back out to the living room. But Irene pulled on his arm and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Bring him in. I’ll need him too. My daughter will be born in the presence of our entire family. Bring him in, Bilaal. And do it quick, because it’s time.” She gasped and jerked as her eyes went wide and then shut tight as she winced. “Oh, God, it’s time.”