Julia
Up in the master suite, I walked back and forth in front of the glass doors that led to the balcony. The sun was still up in the late evening. The wolf I knew waited in the woods nearby hadn’t come out into the open yet. But I could hear him howl now and then.
The way he stayed close by made me feel secure, knowing my totem spirit animal would be overseeing us through the birth of our first child.
Artimus had thought I was crazy when I’d told him where I wanted to have our baby. “Are you nuts?” were his exact words.
But I got my way, eventually. And now my husband would soon be helping me deliver our firstborn.
Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, I thought I might need to rest a moment. “So, what names have we settled on, babe?”
Artimus wasn’t looking as calm as I had always thought he’d be when the time came. He sat in a chair, watching me like a hawk. “I thought we had settled on names, baby? Gwen, if it’s a girl; Glen, if it’s a boy.”
Shaking my head, I couldn’t believe he thought we had settled on those names that didn’t suit me at all anymore. “No, we haven’t settled on anything, Artimus.” A pain hit me hard. Much harder than the last one had been. “Ah!” I grabbed my stomach and rolled onto my back with the pain.
Artimus was there in a flash. “What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer until the terrible contraction had ended. “Damn! That one sucked ass!”
“Do you want …” he began to say.
Only, I knew what he was going to say and interrupted him, “No. I don’t want to leave this place. I don’t want to go to the hospital. The wolf couldn’t be there if I did that.”
He looked stunned. “The wolf?” Then he looked out the window toward the woods. “Is that what this is all about? That stupid wolf? Julia, that’s crazy.”
I was sick and tired of being called crazy all the damn time. “Stop saying that, Artimus. You know I have a thing about being called crazy.”
“Well, I have a thing about keeping you and our baby safe.” He ran his hands over my shoulders then helped me to lie back on the bed in a better position than I’d landed in. “But I’ll try to refrain from saying that you’re crazy. What I’ll come up with, I don’t know. You see, you’ve got some ideas that are pretty far out there.”
My eyes held his as he propped my head on the pillow. “Yeah, my ideas can be out there, can’t they? Like the idea of you and me being together forever from the moment I first saw you. But look how that turned out.” I felt like he needed to be reminded of that fact. “I know the wolf is good luck for us. So I want to be here, where I can feel his spirit when we bring our child into this world.” The slightest ripple of a scene shot through my mind. I was gazing into blue eyes, tiny ones that belonged to our daughter. I grabbed his hand. “It’s a girl, Artimus.”
“What, the wolf?” he asked as he frowned at me.
“Our baby,” I corrected him. “I saw her. She has your eyes.”
Looking at me with no expression at all, he finally said, “I guess we’ll see soon, won’t we?” He shook his head as he pulled the blanket up to cover me. “You should rest while you can.”
I could see it in his eyes; he thought I was being crazy again.
How I wished I could prove to him that I had really seen what I just had. But he wasn’t interested in that at all, it seemed. He walked back to sit in his chair, looking out the window at the forest. I knew he thought that I was a crackpot and that he shouldn’t have ever let me have my way.
Closing my eyes, I tried to have faith in myself and my decision to have this baby the way I had dreamt I would before I even became pregnant. Just before our child’s first breath, the wolf would howl. I had dreamed that so many times, I just knew it would come true.
The sudden urge to pee struck me, and I hauled ass out of bed to run the fastest I could as I waddled to the bathroom with Artimus right behind me. “What’s going on now?”
“I’ve got to pee.” I jerked my panties down and pulled my dress up then sat on the toilet. Immediately, pee came gushing out. And I noticed Artimus shaking his head. “What?”
“That’s not pee.” He pointed at my tummy. “That’s your water breaking, baby. From what the classes said, you’re going to feel those contractions much more intensely now. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? You can have painkillers there. An epidural won’t let you feel a thing.”
“I want to feel it.” I knew that sounded nuts, but I did want to know what it felt like.
He shook his head in disbelief. “Okay. I won’t say another word. But all you have to do is say the word, and I’ll have a helicopter here in ten minutes, and you’ll be in a hospital in twenty. Got that?”
I’d known he had something up his sleeve. He wouldn’t have been Artimus Wolfe if he didn’t. “I got that. And for the record, I knew you had a backup plan.”
“It’s what dads do, baby.” He jerked his head toward the bedroom. “I’ll put the plastic sheets on the bed, so it doesn’t get messed up. You strip down to nothing to make things easier. And I’ll get the things ready to go.”
It was really happening. The time was at hand. Our baby was on her way.
I ran my hand over my stomach as liquid continued to fall out of me into the toilet. I was thankful I’d felt the urge and had gotten out of the bed for this messy part of the delivery. “So, baby girl, what is your name?”
The sound of the wolf howling in the distance had a name popping into my mind. Luna.
When I made my way back to the bedroom after a brief shower to thoroughly clean my body, I found Artimus laying out a yellow blanket on the bed. It was the one he would wrap our baby in.
“I’ve got her name, Artimus,” I informed his as I climbed into the bed.
“If it is a her, what have you come up with?” he asked as he pulled the blanket up to cover me.
“Luna.” I watched his eyes as he looked at me stoically.
“Luna,” he repeated. “I have to say that I like it. Luna Wolfe. Yeah, that’ll work. And if it’s a boy?”
I shook my head. “It’s not.”
“Then I’ll stick with Glen if you’re wrong and we have us a little boy, Julia. If that’s okay with you,” he said with a chuckle.
“Sure.” Another contraction hit me, and I groaned with it.
Only ten more contractions came before Artimus told me that he saw a mass of dark hair between my legs. I was in agony. I had never felt so much pain. But underneath all that pain ran a river of excitement.
Our little girl is nearly here!
Four massive pushes had her head out, and the wolf howled long and loud just outside. I turned my head to look out the glass doors and found he’d come out into the open. Darkness had finally come, and the full moon lit up the night. My wolf was right there. Just like in my dreams.
“One more push, Julia, and the shoulders will be out, and the rest will follow quickly.”
A sharp cry filled my ears as the baby took her first breath. “She’s here!” I felt hot tears as they fell on my cheeks.
After one more push, I heard my husband whisper, “You were right. We have us a girl. Hello, Luna. I’m your daddy.” He put her on my stomach, and I put my hands on her to hold her still while her daddy cut her cord. “And this is your mommy, Little Luna Wolfe.”
We’d found ourselves right in the middle of our happily ever after, both of us sure our ending would follow suit.
The End.