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As the situation escalates and numbers grow, Alex feels helpless. It becomes apparent that it’s going to be a matter of when as opposed to if and the passing days, sadly, confirm her suspicions.
She makes the call as March ticks into double digits. ‘Do it now. Effective immediately.’
That’s all her wife needs. ‘And you?’
‘I will as well. Family comes first. Always.’
The shelter in place order was officially issued on March 23.
Under normal circumstances (if the word normal could ever really apply to a global health crisis) both of them would’ve been out on the frontlines, helping in any way they could. These, however, weren’t normal circumstances. Maggie was a little over six months pregnant with their first child. So, instead, Alex was now into her second week of working from home, whilst Maggie was into her second week of an earlier than planned maternity leave.
They couldn’t take any risk.
With the city grinding to a standstill, crime plummeted. Aliens, unsure of whether or not they were immune, didn’t want to take the chance either, and the DEO had become more or less, for now, redundant. Alex had made the decision to redirect their efforts. ‘Tomorrow,’ she closes her laptop. ‘It all launches tomorrow.’
‘I’m so proud to be your wife,’ Maggie nuzzles her neck.
‘I’m just a small part of this.’ It’d be Kara and agents delivering food and essential supplies across the city, whilst Brainy, J’onn and more agents put deliveries together at the desert base turned distribution centre. She’d made some calls, redirected agency funds, and navigated a little red tape, whereas they’d be doing the heavy work over the next weeks and maybe even, though hopefully not, months.
‘The part that made it all possible.’ She peppers that neck in kisses. ‘So. Proud. Of. You.’
Before, she’d always considered herself lucky but now, more so than ever, she’d never felt luckier to be where she was - married to Maggie, expecting a child with her after years of trying, and with a solid roof over her growing family’s heads. ‘Thank you.’ And she wanted to make that little family proud as much as she wanted to protect them.
Maggie’s smile was big. ‘Now, since you’re done with all the logistics, maybe you could stop using me as your own personal side table?’
Working from home had, at this point, turned into working from bed.
Alex sheepishly grabs the papers she’d left on her wife’s bump which was, oh so conveniently, at the most convenient height. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise to me. Apologise to your child.’
Alex shimmies down to whisper to the little bean, her little bean whom she couldn’t wait to meet in a couple months time. ‘Sorry baby.’
~ ~ ~
Adjusting, for Alex, hadn’t been all that hard.
It was Maggie that was struggling, and Alex was struggling to see her struggling.
Maggie was Maggie. She hated not being able to help; hated not being in control of situations; and especially hated the fact that an idyllic pregnancy had been thrust into a dark and uncertain world.
A little later that day, Alex finds Maggie sat on the bench in the backyard. Gerty is chasing butterflies but Maggie’s not watching, staring into space and holding a cup of herbal tea that’s long gone cold.
‘Hey.’
The word snaps Maggie out of her reverie. ‘Hey.’
‘You want some company?’
‘Not if it’s distracting you from work.’
Alex shakes her head. ‘Like I said, my work is pretty much done right now, I’ve done all I can possibly do. So,’ she sits down beside her, ‘Now it's time to look after you and the little one. In fact, I’ve made a list of things we could do.’
‘You and your lists,’ Maggie smiles.
‘Lists are good,’ Alex says. ‘And I think you’ll love this one.’ She brings out her phone, the notes app open. ‘We’ll do at least one activity a day, and some can be repeated if you like. The choice is yours.’
Maggie opts for Movie and Duvet Day .
~ ~ ~
The following day looks set to establish what a typical day in quarantine will now be.
They opt to undertake a project - a real one, that wields visible results, as opposed to making their way through their DVD library - whilst Alex has to take a minute every now and then to deal with a few emails, or answer a few calls.
She starts the morning off by checking her inbox, before calling Kara and J’onn respectively. Then she makes breakfast, taking it upstairs and serving it in bed. ‘For you, my love,’ she sets the glass of orange juice on the nightstand, whilst resisting the urge to balance the plate on the bump, remembering the earlier scolding. Instead, she rests her hand there as she perches on the edge of the bed. ‘One day, I won’t be repulsed by how you like your bagels. Today, however, is not that day.’
‘What if your child likes them like that?’
Alex shudders. ‘Let’s not think about such horrors.’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘One that I, again, would not like to think about.’
Maggie chuckles.
‘Anyways, in this morning’s news, my sister left a box of cupcakes on the doorstep.’
‘She did?’
‘She did,’ Alex confirms. ‘And someone, though not naming names, may have already called dibs on the one with the chocolate sprinkles.’
Maggie tilts her head. That Tilt . Still as adorable now as it was all those years ago. ‘Is that someone you?’
Alex shrugs. ‘I don’t know, they wished to remain anonymous.’
‘And what would anonymous do if I decided to have the one with the chocolate sprinkles?’
‘Pout, probably.’
‘Yeah, you would,’ Maggie grins. ‘It’s okay, you can have that one. And it was really sweet of Kara to drop them off.’
It was. Kara didn’t have much in the way of spare time right now, between running deliveries and working from home for CatCo . Yet in the free time she did have, she was baking goodies to drop off at hospitals and care homes around the city. The doctors, nurses and care workers were the ones saving lives, and she was very happy to play sidekick. ‘Did you decide what you wanted to do today?’
Maggie smiles. ‘I did.’
~ ~ ~
The spare room was a disaster zone.
A little over four years ago, they’d moved here and had had every intention of converting that particular room into a guest room before it would, one day, become the nursery. Life had gotten in the way, that did not happen and, instead, it became, essentially, a storage room. Moving boxes were still stacked in one corner, Gerty’s old puppy crate was in another; and there, amongst many other things, were garbage bags filled with stuff they’d never got round to dropping off at Goodwill.
‘Well, I guess it’s a good thing that the country is locked down for the foreseeable,’ Maggie remarks as she takes in The Mess in front of them. ‘Though, I’m not sure the few months we have before we’re moms will be enough.’
Alex grimaces. ‘I forgot how bad this room was.’
‘I did too, though it wasn’t so much forgetting as not wanting to believe.’
‘Yeah, same.’ Alex sizes the room up, considers the potential lurking beneath the mess.
Her silent pondering does not go unnoticed. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘What--.’
‘I can see those cogs turning, what is it?’
‘How do you do that?’
‘It’s my sixth sense. The Alex sense, and it’s both a blessing and a curse,’ Maggie says. ‘Now, tell me. What are you thinking?’
‘You’re gonna hate me--.’
‘Not likely, I love you more than anything in the world.’
‘Aw, babe--.’
‘Spit it out.’
So Alex does. ‘What if we make this room our office, and turn our current office into the nursery?’ There was little difference between the size of the two rooms. This room was, technically, bigger but it’d be an office for two adults, as opposed to a room for one child. ‘And it’d make the nursery just that little bit closer to our room which, let’s face it, will make a huge difference when we’re sleep-deprived and miserable getting up every night.’
The idea is considered. ‘You do have a point, but--.’
‘It’s gonna take twice the amount of work to switch these rooms over, yeah, that’s why I figured you’d hate it. But,’ Alex forces a smile. ‘We are in quarantine, after all…’
~ ~ ~
They decide to make the switch.
That decision is officially arrived at after quickly sketching out layout plans for both rooms. Alex must’ve pictured the nursery a thousand times before but, now, it looked even more perfect.
First things first, however, was sorting through the mess they’d accumulated over the years.
‘I still say you should keep this.’
Maggie rolls her eyes. ‘Babe, you don’t need to go through those bags. We already decided to donate that stuff....years ago.’
Alex holds the blouse in question up. ‘It’s pretty.’
‘If you love it so much then you keep it.’
‘And make you wear it? Sure.’
‘No. You will wear it.’
‘I wouldn’t look good in this,’ Alex counters. ‘Flowers have always been more of a you thing.’
‘Yeah, maybe but I don’t really think something like that will be a me thing for a good few months yet,’ Maggie rubs her growing stomach in case Alex had forgotten she was currently with child. ‘You can’t keep getting sidetracked. This one needs a nursery. If you want to go through everything in those bags then fine. But put them in the garage and do so later, alright?’
Her wife was right. This was exactly why this room had become what it had. ‘No,’ Alex pushes herself to her feet, grabbing both bags. ‘We decided these were for Goodwill, so I won’t go through them.’
‘Good.’
‘On one condition.’
Maggie sees it coming. ‘I keep that blouse?’
‘You keep that blouse.’
A deal is made. ‘Fine.’
~ ~ ~
The hours that pass are productive.
They sort through two cardboard boxes of science magazines that Alex had collected, tossing a couple into a pile for recycling before transferring them into sturdy storage boxes that they’d bought, again, years ago.
They also find, serving as a bookmark in one of the publications, a little memento that brings back memories. ‘The concert that never was,’ Maggie laughs. ‘Well, it was. Just not for you.’
‘I guess I did get some use out of this ticket after all,’ Alex runs her thumb over the slightly tattered Barenaked Ladies VIP ticket. ‘That was...some night.’
‘Funny way to describe getting abducted by a White Martian.’
‘Pfft, for me that’s just another Tuesday,’ Alex shrugs. ‘Except that Tuesday, I also got a Barenaked Ladies tee because my girlfriend loved me so much to buy me something from the merch stand.’
‘Yeah, I did,’ Maggie grins.
Alex still had that, now slightly faded, shirt. No matter what, that would never end up in a Goodwill bag.
~ ~ ~
Finally, they start to see the floor.
‘Oh this is a relic,’ Maggie holds up the blue yoga mat. ‘You only ever used it once.’
‘Uh, I went to at least three classes,’ Alex counters. ‘Then I realized I much prefer my sleep in the mornings.’
‘More like you didn’t like the instructor asking you to demonstrate in front of the class.’
Alex had indeed hated that. At work, she was more than confident in front of groups of people; outside of that, she was not and she did not enjoy doing the downward dog in front of twenty other women. ‘I couldn’t see your ass from the front of class, no wonder I didn't like it.’
Maggie laughs. ‘Yeah, also that.’ She tosses the mat out into the hallway, to throw out later.
Before her wife returns to rummaging and reminiscing, Alex seizes the opportunity to get something off her chest. ‘By the way, I, uh, I had booked a little babymoon for us. Nothing extravagant, no flights or excessive travel, just a little spa night away just outside of the city as a surprise.’
’Alex, that’s...so sweet,’ Maggie smiles.
It would’ve been, her little way of saying thank you to the woman that was about to make her a mother. ‘They called the other day to cancel it, understandably, but they were great, offering either a full refund or the chance to rebook for a later date for the same cost. So,’ she reaches for Maggie’s hand. ‘I asked to rebook at a later date, once we’ve had the baby and once things are safe again. And to give us a night away to recharge - I hear my sister is already down for babysitting, and I haven’t even asked her--.’
Maggie shuts her up with a kiss. ‘I love you,’ she rests her forehead against Alex’s. ‘So much.’
~ ~ ~
By late afternoon, the room is tidied and organized.
They’d start switching the two rooms tomorrow.
For dinner, Alex orders takeout, making sure to add a fat tip for the delivery driver as means of thanks during this unprecedented time - she also ordered more pizza than usual, to compensate for the incredible appetite that her wife had developed during pregnancy.
‘Babe?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You know how you said that you’d booked that trip for us?’
‘Mhm,’ Alex mumbles, mouth full of cheesy crust.
‘When was it?’
‘Uh,’ Alex takes a second to think. ‘April 17th.’
Maggie laughs. ‘Of course.’
‘What?’
Maggie pulls out her phone, shows her an email. ‘I’d booked a surprise night away for us too. Look at the date.’
And there, on the reservation, was the check-in date. April 17th . ‘Oh...wow.
‘Maybe it was a good thing that we didn’t try to surprise each other.’
‘You know what they say, great minds think alike.’
Then, all of a sudden, the lighthearted conversation suddenly sours, Maggie’s tone sombre. ‘How long do you think this will last?’
‘Quarantine?’
A nod. ‘That, and just...normalcy. How long before we go back to normal? ‘Cause, right now, I’m not too excited about bringing a child into this world. Healthy people with good immune systems are getting sick. Babies aren’t as strong.’ She bits her bottom lip in a frail attempt to hide how it shakes as she tries to compose herself. ‘I just I...worried so much about all the normal stuff, you know? And now I have a literal pandemic to worry about? Why can’t things be easy for once?’
Alex felt that.
‘And I know, know that a lot of people have it worse than we do. We’re safe, we have a roof over our heads and our finances are secure but--.’
‘None of that makes your feelings any less valid,’ Alex reassures. ‘People do have it worse but we’re still affected. The whole world is. And it's okay to be worried about that, to be scared. I am as well, but I’m trying my hardest to focus on us, to not worry about things we can’t change.’ That list of things to do had been as much for her benefit as it had been Maggie’s. ‘All we can do is play our part, and keep ourselves safe as much as possible.’ She slides a hand over her wife’s knee. ‘We ride this out, okay? It will pass but it won’t be instant so just think about our kid. ‘Cause they’re gonna grow up and they won’t remember any of this. We’ll be able to go to the beach, to petting zoos, to Disneyworld ...everywhere. And that? That’s what is keeping me going.’
A faint smile.
‘You thinking about that too? It’s pretty great, isn’t it?’ That wonderful future. It might be obscured by dark clouds but that storm would pass. ‘I bought a little piggy bank online a few days ago,’ Alex reveals. ‘It's not arrived yet but, when it does, I was thinking we could stick it in the nursery. Put loose change in it and, every so often, open it up and use whatever money is in there to go out on trips. How does that sound?’
A stronger smile. ‘Good...lovely, actually.’
‘There’s just one, little catch though.’
‘Which is?’
‘We gotta finish the nursery first.’
~ ~ ~
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
They make the most of the time they have, opting not to rush things, focusing on the office first.
‘I can manage.’
‘Are you sure, I--.’
‘Babe,’ Maggie says softly. ‘I’m pregnant, I’m not useless.’
That was something that Alex had been guilty of during this pregnancy, borderline smothering her wife. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay, really. No need to apologise.’
‘It’s not annoying?’
‘A little but it’s also very sweet.’ Maggie revs the drill in her hand. ‘You can, however, check the brackets are straight.’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, good point,’ Maggie nods. ‘It took you long enough to figure out you weren’t straight, I should probably do that too.’
~ ~ ~
After two days of intermittent work, the spare room was now an office.
A bookshelf lined one wall; the desk sat beneath the window that overlooked the backyard; and Alex’s old, and neglected, acoustic guitar was propped up to the right of the door. The part they loved most, however, was that shelf they’d put up to display 6x4 frames from various parts of their time together.
It was only half full with plenty space to add more memories.
And, it seemed, something else as Maggie placed a mason jar down on it.
‘What’s that for?’
‘What you said a few days ago gave me an idea,’ Maggie explains. ‘I thought since our little one was going to have a savings pot, we could too. For our own trips. For mommy alone time .’
‘Oh.’ Alex likes the sound of that. Very much.
Maggie pulls a few crumpled dollar bills out of the pocket of her maternity pants, and tosses them into the jar. ‘Might as well start now.’