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Jake doesn't confess it to anyone.
He's done everything out there to make sure he’s a cool, progressive dad-to-be when it comes to this. He’s both read books and watched educational videos to prepare himself before the most important day of his life. He’s not fazed by mentions of mucus plugs, amniotic fluid or placentas. He and Amy even did an online course together a few weeks ago, talking about their wishes and expectations and how he could be the best possible support for her during labor. He is ready for this.
Still, Jake is seriously terrified as he watches Amy give birth to their son.
He’s amazed, confused, and nervous both in the sense that he’s scared something will go wrong, and in the sense that he’s bursting with anticipation. He wonders if he's ever experienced such a wide spectrum of emotions at once before. He’s been through a lot, yet he figures he probably hasn’t. This is, by far, the weirdest experience of his life - and he rode a police horse through the city just fifteen minutes ago.
They're so close. He feels guilty that he wasn't there before, but at least he’s there now, giving Amy his hand to hold as she uses some kind of superhuman strength to keep going.
“Just a little longer and then you get a break,” the firefighter - Curt, he’s introduced himself as - tells her. Amy manages a nod and squeezes her face together, letting out a noise somewhere between a grunt and a whimper before falling back against the bed again, panting. “You’re so close now. Deep breaths and keep going.”
“I really don’t like this,” she gets out, rambling the words so they sound like one.
“Me neither,” Rosa mutters. Jake can’t help but laugh, but it gets drowned out by the sound of another groan from Amy. He tries to rub her back to help, trying to massage even an ounce of the pain away, even though he can’t imagine he’s helping much. Her hoodie is damp from sweat at this point, and Jake thinks that they should take it off. Without it, she could get their son directly on her chest once he’s born, and he knows that was key in the birth plan they wrote so carefully. Even though that plan was torn to shreds about a million horrible things ago, he feels like he owes it to her to make some of the wishes come true.
Amy exhales, some of the tension falling from her shoulders as another contraction comes to an end. For how long, Jake’s not sure; they seem to be melting together at this point. Rosa awkwardly pats her friend’s leg and swallows hard. The expression on her face is pale, a mix of freaked-out and just deeply uncomfortable. Jake wishes he could take a picture.
“The hoodie,” he tells Amy, who nods and draws her arms in so he can pull the item over her head. It’s perfect timing, because the moment it’s off, the focus returns to her face and she squeezes his hand so hard Jake wonders if she’ll actually dent the bones in it. He’d wear the injury with pride if she did.
“You’re doing so good,” he whispers, and she shakes her head. “Almost over, babe.”
“I hate this so bad,” she tells him, and Jake figures it’s justified. He presses a kiss to her sweaty forehead, and says,
“It’ll be worth it.”
“Kid’s got a lot of hair,” Rosa says. Her voice is somewhere between grossed out, frightened and a little bit impressed. Jake’s not sure he’s heard so many nuances in her voice before. This situation seems to be bringing out a lot of new sides in people.
“You could touch the head if you want to,” Curt tells Amy, and she groans.
“Nope, nope, no need, just get him out, thanks -”
Jake’s ashamed of himself for laughing, but the firefighter chuckles, too.
“Okay. Next contraction, you give me absolutely everything you’ve got.”
She looks so tired, Jake thinks. She must be; this wasn’t how they planned for any of this to happen, and he’s aching with sympathy for her after what she’s gone through in the last few hours. He almost wants to protest and tell Curt that Amy deserves a break first, but he knows that’s not how it works. The only thing he can give her right now is to look her in the eyes, try to look convincing as he nods, and keep holding her hand. Amy gives him a questioning look, and he nods again, to which she nods right back and squeezes his hand even harder.
Then she lets out a sound that's more like a scream of pain than anything he’s ever heard from her before, and Jake’s heart in his throat before the scream fades into a slow, stretched out, whine, and the firefighter tears Amy’s hoodie from Jake’s arms.
There’s an odd, weirdly squishing sort of sound, and Jake could swear the world stops spinning for a second or two.
Nothing outside of this room matters anyway as Curt lifts something - someone - tiny and purple onto Amy's chest, covering him with the hoodie as he helps to dry him off. There’s a few terrifying seconds of silence, then a small gurgle, and then their son is crying loud and clear as Amy whispers oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. She’s shaking from adrenaline and exertion and probably shock, and he thinks she might be crying, too. Jake just stands paralyzed, feeling like an absolute moron.
“You did it,” he says when the words find him, squeezing his wife's shoulder in a gesture she doesn’t seem to notice. “You did it, Ames.”
“That was terrible,” she snivels, stroking her son’s back through the hoodie as he cries again. “Oh, I’m so sorry, baby, it’s okay, I’m here -”
“Congratulations, guys,” says Rosa. When Jake looks to her, she's making a face somewhere between utter disgust and downright fear.
“EMTs should be here any minute,” says Curt. He’s got a grin on his face now, and Jake’s overcome with an overwhelming urge to hug him as a thank you for what he did for them today. He’s never wanted to hug a firefighter before, but then again, today isn't any ordinary day.
“Thank you,” he just says instead, and looks back at his son.
Rosa was right - this baby does have quite a bit of dark, thick hair. He also has a weird head shape and his eyes squeezed shut, patches of white vernix covering him together with specks of blood. He looks funny, is Jake’s first thought, and then he feels guilty for thinking that about his child. Their baby is lying against Amy’s chest, and he sees that she’s pulled down her tank top and opened her bra so there’s nothing in between them, heartbeat against heartbeat. He can’t tear his eyes away.
He’s heard about this moment so many times from so many people - heard all about the overwhelming love and pride, the instant connection he’s supposed to feel as he looks at them - but all Jake can feel is shock. He doesn't know how to take in what just happened, and even though he's been trained on how to act in situations of intense stress, this one has him frozen.
His son is no longer crying now, just gently sniffling in confusion. The sound manages to perforate the layer of shock, making a hole just wide enough that Jake can reach out his hand, holding his son's fist in his. It's warmer than he thought it would be.
“Hey,” he manages a whisper, voice trembling. “Welcome, pal.”
“Welcome to the family, Mac,” Amy fills in, and Jake's not even mad she stole his line. He just runs his thumb over the fist again, marvelling over how tiny it is, how soft.
He looks to Amy. Her cheeks are wet with tears, but she’s smiling, and she has that tender, adoring gaze in her eyes that reminds him of their engagement and wedding, of all the times she’s looked at him with so much love that it’s made him wonder how on Earth he got so lucky as to get to be so loved by her.
Their son gets to be that lucky now.
Jake is just about to tell his son that when the peace that seems to have been draped over the room is abruptly broken. Three EMT’s rush into the room, barely introducing themselves before they start talking to Amy about how she’s feeling, what they’re going to do. One man with a stern face and a blonde ponytail exchanges the hoodie their son’s been wrapped in for a clean towel, rubbing his back with quick motions. A short woman says something about the placenta and Amy shakes her head, and she announces that they’re going to cut the cord. No one acknowledges Jake, and he quietly tries to back to the side, staying out of the way while everything appears to be happening at once.
He meets eyes with Rosa. She still looks pale, and he wants to thank her, too. He’s beyond grateful for everything she did today, for staying with Amy when he couldn’t be there. His classmate from the Academy, whom he got along with simply because they didn’t have to talk about personal stuff, is now one of the three people that helped in delivering his first-born child.
“Thank you,” he mouths, wanting to say so much more. Rosa nods shortly, then excuses herself out of the room, but he notes the hint of a smile on her lips.
**
Jake never imagined his first moments of family bonding to be taking place in an ambulance.
The fluorescent light, the EMTs around them, and the moving vehicle all make him tense, making him feel like he's being watched and graded on how he's supposed to react right now. A nurse with short dark hair and light brown skin puts an IV in Amy's arm, and when Jake looks at her, worried, she points to the clear bag with a comforting smile.
“Just some fluids.”
“I’m okay, babe,” Amy says, and he nods without meeting her eyes, staring at the moving bundle secured underneath the towel and orange ambulance blanket instead. Their son has got a little hat on now, so Jake can see even less of him. “We’re both okay.”
“He’s perfect,” agrees the nurse. Jake decides that he likes her. “Have you got a name for him?”
“Mac,” says Amy, and Jake’s heart feels like it's going to explode just from hearing her tell someone else about their son's name. The name they kept coming back to, over and over again until he eventually won her over. “Short for McClane. From Die Hard.”
“Pretty and unique,” the nurse nods. “It suits him.”
Amy smiles, stroking her thumb over their son's cheeks. “Yeah, it does.”
Mac whimpers slightly. Hopefully not to disagree, Jake thinks. Amy rubs his back, kissing his forehead and whispering something he can’t quite make out. Her face is still flushed and puffy, her ponytail messy and her eye makeup smudged, but seeing her look at their son, Jake doesn’t think he’s ever been so in love, so completely and utterly in awe of her.
And Mac - Jake can't even begin to understand that their son is really here with them. A few chaotic hours he didn't get to be part of, one police questioning room birthing suite, one firefighter and one best friend later, and suddenly he's a father. Despite the months of preparation, the abundant excitement from the second Amy showed him the test with two lines, nothing prepared him for this sense of helpless confusion. Jake’s no control-freak, famously the chilled-out one to contrast his wife’s Type-A, binder personality, but something about the way his world just metamorphosed over the course of a single evening has left him feeling unable to speak, to react, to be there in the way he wanted to. A myriad of thoughts and emotions are playing tag with each other in his head, colliding elbows-first as he tries to piece together what he’s meant to be feeling.
Just this morning, he’d woken up to Amy’s exasperated sighs as she’d waddled back into their bedroom before her first alarm went off, complaining about the Braxton-Hicks contractions and the needing to pee that had woken her up, quote unquote, about a hundred times that night. He’d scooted closer to her in bed, sleepily placing an arm around her and letting his hand drift over the bump.
“He better hurry up and get born soon so I can help out,” he’d mumbled.
“I know,” she’d said then. “But we’re probably not even close. Still three weeks left until the due date, remember?”
“You never know,” he’d said, but he hadn’t imagined being right.
Everything went so fast, and the thought that the baby lying on Amy’s chest is the one he’s been talking to and feeling kicks from for months freaks him out a little, because there’s no distance anymore. Mac is right there. Jake’s got nowhere to hide, no window to deny that he’s officially a father. He can fuck up now, and from the way he’s frozen to his chair in the ambulance, gaze flicking between his shoes and his wife and the EMTs and what little he can see of his son, he thinks he already might be. He’s certainly not feeling helpful.
“Jake?” Amy’s voice snaps him out of his self-critical mindscape. When he turns to her, he meets a worried crease on her forehead. “Are you okay?”
“You just gave birth to a baby in the precinct without any pain relief,” he says, barely believing what he hears, “and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”
She looks at him like she doesn’t understand his point. “You looked off.”
He forces a smile. “I’m okay. Just overwhelmed.” “Yeah, me too,” she confesses, and in a weird way, it makes him feel better.
There’s a squeak from Mac, sounding sad, and Jake’s surprised to feel a new and strange tug at his heart at the sound. Instincts, he figures, somewhere inside him coming to life. They feel oddly relieving.
Amy whispers something gentle to their son, something with the words mi amor, and Mac goes quiet again. A determined little hand makes its way from underneath the blanket up to Amy's shoulder, and she picks it up, kissing it.
Jake reaches out for it, too, wanting to hold it again, but in just that moment, the ambulance comes to a stop.
Once again, things are happening too quickly for him to keep up with. EMTs and nurses are talking over his head, telling them where to go and what's going to happen, only they’re talking too fast for him to catch. He recognizes Dr. Kagan, the doctor who was supposed to deliver their baby if things had gone to plan. She doesn’t seem to mind that her role was stolen from her, smiling at Jake as he notices her.
“Congratulations,” she says. “Amy, the nurses are just going to borrow your baby for a couple of minutes, okay? Just so we can check on you both properly. Don’t worry,” Dr. Kagan fills in before Amy’s opened her mouth, “dad will be with him for the whole time.” It’s the first time someone’s referred to him as dad since Mac was born, Jake realizes. It makes him feel warm inside. A nervous kind of warm, but a good kind.
“You and baby are coming with me,” says a younger-looking nurse with purple highlights bouncing in her dark hair. She reminds Jake of the pictures he’s seen of Rosa before the Academy, except a much cheerier version. “You’ll all be reunited soon, I promise.”
Jake looks back at Amy. Her eyes have the stressed-out look he sees whenever he comes back from having put himself unnecessarily at risk in his job again, and he musters a comforting smile through his own nerves.
“I love you,” he tells her, and then the nurse with purple highlights calls him again as Mac is separated from Amy and transferred into the nurse’s arms.
“Love you too. Don’t let him out of your sight, okay?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, making an X over his heart.
Jake’s more bothered than he expected to see his child being carried in someone else’s arms. He's not worried, per se, but a little jealous, feeling a protectiveness settling in for every noise his son makes.
The examination room is small, and Jake feels like he's crowded against a wall as the nurses move around. They wash Mac clean with a damp washcloth, which he doesn’t seem to enjoy judging from his cries. It takes all of Jake’s self-control not to ask them to stop. Someone clips a plastic bracelet onto Mac’s foot, and Jake hasn't asked what it is before the nurse takes his own hand, putting one there too, and he realizes. It's a medical bracelet to tell everyone who this baby belongs to, make sure he's not mistaken for another. They're matching, marking the fact that they belong together.
Mac is weighed and measured, and Jake’s relieved that they write down the numbers because he’s not sure he hears them. His focus is busted, every bit of it going towards listening to each confused squeak and grunt coming from his son as other people take care of him.
“We're just going to dress him and then he'll be ready to go back to mom,” says the nurse. “Maybe dad would like to do it?”
“Me?” Jake feels his cheeks heat, heartbeat speeding. “I, uh, yeah. Yeah. I would.”
“Great!” She smiles. “Just come over here.”
Jake steps forward to the examination table on shaky legs. The nurse - Danton, her name sign reads - points to a white wraparound onesie, white and grey socks, a new, clean hat and the classical hospital baby blanket.
“Careful with the head,” she reminds him. Jake wants to say he knows, he read the books and took the courses, but he's nervous and doesn't want to be judged, so he just nods.
Gingerly, as if he was handling the finest of china, he slides his right hand under the infant’s head while supporting the neck. He feels fragile, yet strong at the same time, and he’s not crying anymore. Nurse Danton slides the unbuttoned onesie under Mac’s body, and Jake lowers him onto it, guiding one arm into the sleeve and then the other. He does the buttons one by one, grateful for the side-snap design that means he doesn't have to pull anything over his son’s head just yet, and puts them together so they're closing over the diaper. He’s doing it all in slow, careful motions, watching Mac’s face for any hint of an upset expression, but he seems fine. Jake's doing okay.
He puts on the white socks, pausing for a second to marvel over how tiny baby socks are. They shouldn't be that small, he’d said to Amy when they were folding clothes in preparation just days earlier, but they fit his son perfectly.
It's late in the evening of the craziest day of Jake's life and the very first of Mac’s, and as he’s putting miniature socks on the tiniest and most adorable of feet, the feelings finally start to well over him.
He is dressing his son for the first time - the first of many more to come. He’ll be doing this time and time again, because Mac is going to be part of Jake’s life now. He's grown a suspicion as they waited all those months, but he's certain now; he's going to be the most important part, the part Jake would happily walk through fire for in order to protect. Everything makes sense when he looks at him. He gets it now; it was him they were waiting for all along. The fighting in that hospital room because he was too scared to admit that maybe he did want kids, deep down, the stressful months trying to get pregnant in the first place, and each negative test with the stark single line and no trace of a second. Every tear he saw his wife cry when she thought he wouldn't see, every anxiety attack she had in the early weeks of pregnancy because she thought she felt a cramping feeling, and every day of watching her suffer through every symptom from nausea and exhaustion to backaches and mood-swings. All of it was worth it for this round-cheeked, wide-eyed, intrinsically perfect baby who’s half-him, half-Amy, and fully himself. He had hoped that it would be, and it is a proud and glorious feeling to be certain he was right.
Mac is perfect, and Jake vows to himself that nothing and no one can ever hurt this child. For the rest of his life, starting today, he will always be protecting him, and he will always be there. There in the way his own dad wasn't, there in the way he has promised himself to be.
He wiggles Mac’s little foot and hopes that he understands.
He puts on the hat last. He slides it over the head slowly, so that it covers the soft swirls of dark brown hair. Jake selfishly hoped for Mac to be born with a lot of hair. He would have loved him either way, but he’s still happy his wish came true. This is the world's cutest baby - no other has ever stood a chance.
“You're so perfect,” he tells him in a low whisper. “You're so perfect, and I love you.”
Mac wriggles in return, pouting his full baby lips.
“Just swaddle him in the blanket,” nurse Danton reminds him, “and we can take him back to mom. Reunite the family,” she says, and Jake has no chance to control his grin, because she's talking about his family. “Need me to show you?”
“No,” says Jake, recalling all the Youtube tutorials he practiced on a borrowed baby doll on a day off and feeling suddenly confident. “I’ve got this.”
The nurse must agree, because she doesn't correct him once. Jake folds the blanket like a diamond, lifts Mac carefully onto it, tucks the left side over his chest and secures it underneath him, the bottom of the fabric up and underneath, then the right side over and under. Not too loose, not too tight. Nurse Danton nods, almost looking a little impressed, but that’s not what boosts his self esteem most; it’s the fact that Mac’s not crying, not even whimpering at the change. He just blinks, and for a second Jake thinks their eyes are meeting, a brief, shining second of bonding he wants to hold onto.
“There we go,” smiles Nurse Danton. “Now, let’s go back to mom, shall we? I’m sure she misses you and wants to know you’re okay,” she says, lifting Mac into her arms. “She’ll be happy to see you.”
Jake thinks of the smile on Amy's lips after every scan they went to, how she’d hug him every time they left with a series of new sonogram pictures to stick to their fridge and glue in the baby book, telling him she couldn’t wait to see, really see, their baby. Finally, the wait is over. Jake has never found a walk through hospital corridors to be so exciting before.
Amy’s sitting up in bed when they get there. She’s changed into a pink hospital gown, removed the smudged makeup on her face and fixed her ponytail, and she’s eating from a plate of hospital food that someone must’ve brought her, but she puts it aside the moment she sees them. She looks tense at first, but the worry falls from her shoulders as Nurse Danton reassures her that Mac is doing perfectly. Despite his slightly early arrival and more than a little dramatic birth, everything has gone well. They’re all okay.
Better than okay, even, because when Mac is placed in Amy’s arms, she smiles so bright that it seems to shine in the whole room. It spreads a glow that puts a line through all the hard times they went through to get there; not erasing them, but proving them insignificant. Jake wishes he could go back and tell the Amy that cried in his arms on the night she took the test they didn’t know would be the final negative one of their baby journey about this moment; that one day, sooner than they knew, she would be holding their newborn son in their arms and nothing else would matter.
The nurses leave the room, telling them to press the button if they need any help at all, and Jake finds himself alone with his wife and son for the very first time. Technically, he supposes it isn’t the first, but it’s weird to think that the baby in Amy’s arms, inspecting her with wide eyes as she holds him so close, is the same he felt kick against his hand this morning. Strange, yet obvious at the same time.
“He’s so perfect,” Amy whispers. “ I can’t believe I did that.”
“I can,” Jake mumbles, sitting down in the armchair next to the bed. “It was crazy, but you did it.” She gives him a faint smile. “Seriously though, Ames - are you okay? That was insane.”
“I’m okay,” she promises, nodding. “I mean, the adrenaline’s wearing off, I’m exhausted and I feel like I was run over by a truck. Also, they gave me stitches for some light tearing, which, ow. But - yeah. I’m okay.”
“Sounds painful,” Jake grimaces, thinking of the horror examples in the book he read. Childbirth is so intense.
Amy rolls her eyes. “Yeah. But I’d do it again for him,” she says, watching Mac as he seems to calm down in her arms, finally at home. “I mean, not today. Or this month, or year. Pretty much every bit of that was terrible. But it was worth it.”
“I was seriously scared of you,” Jake confesses, and it makes her laugh. “I still am. Just a little.”
“Well, get over it.” Amy scoots slightly to the side, wincing as she does. “Get your ass over here so we can stare at the perfect baby we made.”
Jake figures he’s not in a position to protest, so he moves, perching himself on the edge of the bed. It's dumb, but he's still feeling nervous to hurt her. Plus, something about the way Mac and Amy are looking at each other, their son’s gaze so focused for a newborn, makes him feel like he's interrupting something between them. After all, Amy and Mac have spent every minute of the last nine months together while he's merely hung out on the outside. He's going to have to start catching up.
Mac kicks one foot out of the swaddle, and Jake tries to fix it, but that only serves to make the infant scrunch his face and look upset, so he lets it be. Maybe his son isn't a fan of being swaddled, or maybe he has a great passion for breakdancing already at less than an hour's age. Maybe he's practicing to become the world's youngest and most skilled soccer player, although Jake is not-so-secretly hoping for his son to be a future basketball star. Maybe, none of the above options are true and Jake did a suboptimal job of swaddling his son for the first time. Whichever option it is, there’ll be time to find out.
For now, though, he settles on holding Mac’s little foot in his hand again, wiggling it as he keeps staring at his new (shared) favorite face in the world. He finds it hard to say whether his son looks more like him or Amy yet; there seems to be a bit of traits from both of them if he looks closely. Most of all, though, Jake thinks Mac looks like himself, and he’s the most beautiful tiny human he ever saw.
Jake wants to tell him that, and later, when Amy's asleep and he’s taking the chance to bond with his son on his own, he will. He’ll tell him all about how longed-for he was and how loved he already is by so many people. He’ll tell him all about the fun adventures they’ll have in the future together, and how he’ll never have to be alone. He’ll tell him how excited he is to get to know him, and how much he hopes he’ll have the rest of his life to do so.
For now, though, his reflex is to do whatever he does best when things get too emotional - make a joke to diffuse the nervous tension still lingering in the room.
“Well, we did it, Ames,” he says. “We made the world's hottest baby.”
~