Archive of Our Own

i.

The first time Eddie thinks she’s going into labor, she’s 32 weeks, it’s her last day of light duty before leave, and she’s all by herself at the station.

She’s been helping Cap with paperwork all morning, and despite Bobby having a bad back, the chair in his office is awful. It absolutely kills her hips. So, she decides to take a little break and hit the gym while everyone is out on a call. It’s nothing crazy, really, nothing like before she reached the third trimester and got too big to do her regular sets, just a few stretches to loosen her muscles up; a couple squats, a few bounces on the exercise ball—

It’s while she’s on the exercise ball that she first feels it, this faint squeezing around her belly, like a too-tight belt. It’s not painful, hell, it’s barely even uncomfortable, but it’s a sensation that she’s never felt before, and the first thing she thinks is Am I having a contraction?

Eddie freezes on the exercise ball, hands on her tight belly, and she doesn’t breathe for the full 23 seconds that the sensation has a hold of her. When it finally lets go, so do the floodgates.

Because she’s only 32 weeks. She’s in her third trimester, the home stretch, as everyone keeps calling it, but it’s too early. There’s risks of respiratory issues, and feeding issues, and underdeveloped lungs—

“—infection, vision loss—”

“Eddie, what’s going on?”

Eddie sucks in a shuddering breath and releases it as a shuddering sob right into the phone. “I think I’m in labor.”

Luckily the call was nothing serious, just dire enough to need all hands on deck, but not so dire that they’re not able to wrap up and get back to the station right then. Buck stays on the phone with her the whole ride back, trying to talk to her, coax her to breathe, but Eddie doesn’t hear a thing he says, and she’s worked herself up into a full-blown panic attack by the time the engine pulls into the bay.

Buck is the first one out, followed by Chimney with his med bag. They all look pale and wide-eyed, and that only makes Eddie cry harder.

She hasn’t moved from the exercise ball, too afraid to, and when Buck breaches the gym mat, she holds her hands out to him like a little kid.

“Hey, hey Eddie, hey, what’s going on? What happened?”

Chimney and Hen kneel on either of Buck’s sides, and Bobby and Ravi stand behind them poised for action. Everyone is looking at her. Everyone is so close.

“Um.” She swallows, and her throat feels like a pinhole. Buck squeezes her knees. “I think I’m— I think I’m having contractions.”

“You think, or you know?” Hen broaches, and everyone shifts their gaze to her.

“What?”

“What did it feel like?”

“Um.” Eddie rubs her hands along the front of her belly, starting at the sides and meeting at her belly button. “Like this squeezing feeling, and it lasted about thirty seconds.”

“Okay,” Hen says, nodding. “And how long ago was this?”

She looks at her watch. “Maybe five minutes before I called Buck, so…twenty minutes ago?”

“Was that the only one?”

Eddie can feel the panic attack receding like the tide, and shame, hot shame, taking its place. “Yeah.”

Everyone visibly relaxes. Hen and Chimney get up with matching, knowing smiles.

“Braxton Hicks!” Chimney crows. “Better get used to them, Diaz. You’re in the home stretch now.”

“Braxton… What?” She looks at each of them in turn, landing on Buck, who’s still on his knees before her and looking so, so soft in the face, like he just couldn’t love her any more, despite how stupid she is. “False contractions?”

“False contractions,” Hen confirms, throwing her bag over her shoulder in a very job well done sort of way. “I’m surprised you haven’t been feeling them before now. For most women, Braxton Hicks start at 20 weeks.”

“Yeah, don’t you remember them from your first pregnancy?” Chimney asks, smacking his gum. They’re all looking at her again, scrutinizing her, like she’s a bad mother, or something. Like she should know these things.

Eddie must make a face, because Bobby’s eyebrows flick up on his forehead, and he holds his hands out. “Come on, guys,” he says, corralling them up like sheep in a pen. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

Soon, they’re all gone, scattered to different corners of the station, leaving Eddie and Buck in the gym. Buck’s hands haven’t left her knees, and now they’re rubbing, going up her thighs and back down again. Eddie presses the heels of her palms into her eyes hard enough she sees fireworks.

“Braxton Hicks?” she mutters bitterly. “God, Buck, I’m so st—”

Buck shoots to his feet, and Eddie’s hands fall away from her eyes in surprise. He’s holding his hands out for her to take.

“Come with me?”

Together, they haul themselves up the stairs to the loft, and crawl into a bed at the back of the empty bunk room, shoes and all. Eddie lays on her back and Buck on his side, his arm thrown around her mountain of a belly. The baby is wriggling around, as happy as ever, like she didn’t just send Eddie into a panic. Braxton Hicks. God.

“Sorry for freaking out.” She snorts. “You’d think I never had a baby before.”

“Well, it has been a while,” Buck says carefully, and Eddie looks at him. Just like the tide, the panic rolls back in.

“I have no idea if I had Braxton Hicks with Chris,” she says, hushed, rushed, a secret she’s been keeping this whole pregnancy. She really can’t hide it any longer, can she? “I don’t really remember much, and it’s not, you know, it’s not because it’s been a while.”

Buck’s hand slides up her belly, and he starts mindlessly fingering at her belly button. He’s been obsessed with it ever since it popped, and she hates when he plays with it. She shoves his hand away.

He doesn’t even notice. “Really?”

Tight chest, tight throat, she reminds herself to breathe. “I was so—so scared the whole time, Buck. From the second I found out, all the way up until Chris was born. And my parents were so mad, and Shannon’s parents. Everyone was mad at me except for Pepa and my abuela, I felt like the world was ending and it was all my fault.”

Buck’s hand drifts to her belly button again, and this time she leaves it.

“I remember the morning sickness, and feeling him kick and move around, but after that—” She shrugs. In for four, hold, out for four. “I don’t remember going into labor, I barely even remember the pain. I just— I remember everyone being in my room, and the nurses saying Chris was stuck, his—his shoulders were stuck, and he might not make it, and then— He was here. The whole thing was like a bad dream.

“I’m scared, Buck,” she admits. “What if I can’t recognize real labor?”

Buck is quiet at her side, but she can feel his eyes boring into the side of her face. His hand stills on her belly. “I think I’m going to start my leave early,” he eventually says. “Like, now.”

Eddie looks at him. “What? Why?”

Buck sits up on his elbow, and Eddie follows suit. “Well, everything you just told me aside, you’ve never really been the best at recognizing what your body is telling you—”

“Hey—”

He leans over and kisses her. “I want to be there for you. Through all the Braxton Hicks, okay? All the false alarms, and—and the real thing. You’ll have nothing to be scared of.”

Another Braxton Hicks grabs ahold of her belly, like just saying the words triggered it, and she winces. Buck holds her through it. It doesn’t last as long as the first one.

“I hope there’s not a lot of false alarms,” Eddie says, huffing a laugh.

Buck kisses her warm cheek. “Either way, I’ve got your back.”

ii.

After two weeks of Braxton Hicks contractions, Eddie has practically become an expert in the field. They’re just a regular part of her day now, grabbing her at random moments, never lasting more than thirty seconds at a time. Just another part of pregnancy she’s had to learn to deal with.

She hasn’t dealt with them becoming painful, though, like this one right now is.

“Buck,” Eddie says in alarm as she grips the edge of the kitchen counter. What’s usually a tight band around her belly, squeezing and then letting go like a clenching fist, has suddenly turned into something that feels like a bad period cramp.

“Mom, are you okay?” Christopher asks from the table. Eddie ignores him.

”Buck!”

Thundering footsteps race down the hall towards the kitchen, and Buck appears, naked save for a towel held loosely around his waist. He’s dripping wet.

“What, what?” he says, breathless. A shampoo sud drips from his sopping hair into his eye and he hisses.

“It hurts,” Eddie says, and, just like that, the cramp passes. She lets out an even breath, but she doesn’t let go of the counter, just in case she needs to brace herself for another one.

“It hurt?”

“I thought they weren’t supposed to hurt,” Christopher says through a mouthful of peanut butter toast, because he’s been a part of this just as much as the two of them have.

“They’re not,” Eddie and Buck say at the same time.

Eddie, shaky and on edge now, because this baby is killing her nervous system, lets Buck finish his shower, but she plants herself on the closed toilet lid and doesn’t move.

“How are you feeling?” Buck asks her every two minutes, and each time she says, “Fine, I think.”

Because she’s fine, she thinks.

A second cramp seizes her belly as Buck is stepping out of the shower, and her hand shoots out and latches onto his wrist, almost pulling him down to her level. It’s twelve seconds shorter than the last one.

“Okay?” Buck asks, naked as the day he was born, watching her face carefully.

“Yeah,” she says on an exhale. “That didn’t feel any stronger than the last one, and it was shorter, too.”

“Okay, okay, that’s good.” Buck leans down and kisses her on the head. “Where does it hurt?”

Eddie cradles the underside of her belly. “Down here. Right where she’s sitting.”

Buck pulls her to her feet and turns her around. She tries to pretend she doesn’t feel his soft dick pressing into her ass as he interlocks his fingers beneath her belly, because she doubts he’s about to bend her over right here, right now. That’s not going to help the pain.

“I think I know what it is,” he says, and lifts. Eddie lets out an obscene moan that bounces off the bathroom tile, and it has nothing to do with Buck’s dick. “I think the baby is just the size of a cantaloupe this week.”

“Oh, yeah?” Eddie breathes, and leans her head back on Buck’s bare, wet shoulder. “You think your giant baby is making my fake contractions feel like real ones? Really?”

“I think that’s just what it is.” Buck slowly lets go of her belly after a few moments, and Eddie could cry when the weight settles back onto her hips. “But we’ll keep an eye on them, okay? Front of the abdomen, irregular—”

“Don’t get stronger, go away with rest and hydration.” Eddie turns around and reaches up on her toes to kiss him. She’s stopped shaking. Buck’s good at that. “Aye aye, Captain.”

He grins into her mouth, and Eddie really wishes she had the energy to do something about her husband’s naked dick that’s right there in reach. “So go rest and hydrate. Captain’s orders.”

Eddie also wishes she had the energy to get off on her own, because that would probably make her feel better, but instead she pours herself a glass of orange juice and sits herself down on the couch with the morning news.

It’s Sunday, which means the two of them head to the farmer’s market after Buck asks Eddie a dozen and a half times if she feels well enough to go. She had another painful Braxton Hicks while they were getting ready, a deep ache in her belly that had her perching precariously on the edge of the bed, but, again, it wasn’t any stronger than the other two, and the time between the three of them was eleven minutes, and then nineteen, so she assures him that she really is fine.

And that’s what she keeps telling herself through every painful false contraction she has at the farmer’s market.

She regrets wearing a watch, and bringing her phone, and maybe coming here at all, because she realizes after an hour or so that they’re starting to become more regular—the last three were an even ten minutes apart—and definitely more painful.

Buck, in his own little world, his hand basket filled to the brim and his eyes big and sparkling like a kid in a candy shop, doesn’t notice, but the lady at the amigurumi table definitely does.

“You know, they say if you’re unable to talk through the contractions, then that means you’re getting close.” She hands Eddie a little crochet turtle and she takes it wordlessly, on instinct, like she’s on the phone and her kid just handed her something random to hold. “On the house.”

The cramp, or contraction, or whatever, peaks and then begins to dissipate, and she lets out a low groan.

Buck, who was inspecting a blue crochet fish that looks suspiciously like Dory, finally looks at her. “Eddie?”

“I think you should be getting to the hospital, Dad,” the vendor says with a wink that pisses Eddie off.

She grabs Buck’s sleeve and begins pulling him away. “What?” he says.

“Hospital,” is all Eddie says as she drags Buck back to the truck. At some point on the way, he drops his basket. Eddie doesn’t let go of the turtle, though, and she squeezes the life out of it while they drive.

“Should we get Chris?” Buck asks, looking between her and the road. He’s as white as a sheet, and she swears he’s not actually sitting in his seat, instead hovering a nervous two inches above it.

Without answering, Eddie takes out her phone and sends Christopher a text.

It’s time.

Call everyone.

like the avengers??

“Shit, Buck,” Eddie says between her teeth as her insides contract painfully. It’s still localized to the front of her belly, but they’re regular, and getting stronger, and they hurt like a bitch, so— This has to be it. This has to be the real deal.

When the contraction passes, sweat erupts in all of her crevices, and she whips her head around to Buck with a sudden realization.

“Shit, Buck, it’s too early!”

He looks at her briefly. “It’s okay, Eddie. They can— They can give you tocolytes, and then, um, and then corticosteroids, right?”

“Right, right, and UCLA has a really good NICU—”

“We’re going to UCLA?”

“Yes, Buck, we discussed this! UCLA Health! They have a better fetal medicine department than Cedars!”

Buck swears under his breath and does a very fast, very illegal U-turn that almost throws Eddie out of her seat. She puts her seatbelt on, despite how uncomfortable it is on her aching belly.

Both of their phones are ringing nonstop by the time they find a parking spot at the hospital, and they shut them both off before they go in.

Taking Eddie’s hand in his, Buck smiles at her and says, “Ready to go have a baby?”

Eddie lets out a breath. “We’re totally unprepared, and it’s way too early, but yeah, let’s go have this damn baby, I guess.”

They do not have the damn baby. Instead, Eddie walks out of the hospital an hour later with her crochet turtle, a still very pregnant belly, and a new word of the day: ”Prodromal labor”.

If she thought the Braxton Hicks were considered false labor, she was sorely mistaken. No, those were just practice contractions. Prodromal labor is basically everything that real labor is, just without a dilating cervix. So, labor without a baby. As false as it can get.

The ride home is silent, and Eddie is almost afraid to turn her phone back on. When she does, her screen lights up with a thousand texts from the 118 & co. family groupchat. Without reading any, she sends out her own.

False alarm, everyone. Sorry.

That’s okay, Eddie. Better luck next time! 😁
– Bobby Nash

iii.

The false labor doesn’t last long, just as Eddie’s OB had warned her. The painful, consistent, minute-long contractions stick around for barely two days, and then they turn back into the familiar, mild Braxton Hicks. She’s never been so excited to be uncomfortable.

“I just wish I could breathe.”

Athena and Maddie are the only ones that laugh, and they clink their wine glasses together over the table. Eddie looks at her water and scowls. She could so go for a drink right now.

“Careful what you wish for, honey,” Athena says.

Maddie nods. “Yeah, Eddie, the minute you’re able to breathe again is the minute you cease being able to walk.”

Eddie looks at them in turn. It’s Karen who speaks up, grabbing Eddie’s arm a little drunkenly and squeezing. “Lightening,” she says, like it’s a secret. “It’s when the baby drops out of your lungs and into the pelvis.”

“Oof,” Maddie says, pouring herself another glass of wine. The bottle is almost empty now, and Eddie knows the night is coming to an end. A good thing, too; she’s dying to get out of this hard kitchen chair and into bed. “When I was pregnant with Jee, the pressure I felt after she dropped was horrible. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom all the time, and I was already going to the bathroom all the time!”

“You know, the more I hear about pregnancy, the more I’m glad it didn’t work out for us,” Karen laughs, leaning into Hen’s side. Hen kisses her hair.

“And I’m glad I’ll never have to experience it again.” Athena lifts her glass and then swallows the rest of her wine down like she’s knocking back a shot.

“Careful what you wish for,” Maddie says, echoing Athena’s words back at her. “I’ve heard about what you and Bobby get up to, it could still happen.”

Athena’s jaw hits the table, and the kitchen erupts in tipsy laughter. She points a finger at Maddie. “Watch yourself, Buckette.”

Hen reaches over and grabs Eddie’s hand. “Don’t listen to them, Eddie. Pregnancy is a beautiful, wonderful gift.”

“Thank you, Hen.” Eddie hoists herself from the table, and all four of them move like they’re going to get up, but none of them actually do. “I think it’s time to take my beautiful and wonderful gift home. It feels like the baby is pressing directly on my diaphragm.”

“She is!” Maddie says brightly, and that’s when everyone gets up, and they corral Eddie into the living room. “Your uterus is expanding into your diaphragm, that’s why you can’t breathe.”

Athena and Karen sit off to the side, cuddling up together on the Hans’ couch. Maddie stands Eddie in the middle of the carpet and shoves her hand under her ribs.

Eddie flinches away, and the baby flinches with her. “Ow, hey!”

“Stop, stop, come here.” She pulls her back over and puts her hand on the top of Eddie’s belly. “Stay still, I’m going to try and map the baby’s position.”

Eddie looks to Hen, who shrugs. “Don’t look at me, I didn’t even make it through med school.”

Maddie clicks her tongue and pulls her over. “Here, you feel for her head.”

She guides Hen’s hand to the bottom of Eddie’s heavy belly, and together, her and Maddie squeeze and push and prod.

With their mapping, they conclude that the baby is head-down, and her head is low but not yet engaged with the pelvis, and her little butt is pressing directly into Eddie’s diaphragm.

“Her foot is lodged under your ribs,” Maddie says, and Eddie snorts.

“Yeah, I can tell. I’ve been trying to get her to move for days.”

“Lift your arms.”

Eddie lifts her arms above her head obediently. Her shirt rides up halfway over her belly, putting her belly button and her stretchmarks directly in Hen’s face.

“Straighten your back, and put your legs apart.”

Eddie does as she’s told, and she feels the baby shift away from her diaphragm. It’s not much, but it’s enough. She takes a deep breath, her first deep breath in days. “Wow, did you used to be a nurse, or something?”

Maddie giggles and straightens Eddie’s shirt out for her.

That’s when the front door opens, and Buck walks in. He freezes when he sees them gathered in the living room, and Eddie with her arms in the air and her legs apart like she’s being frisked.

“Uh, hi ladies?”

“Hi, Buck!” the room choruses.

Athena hands Eddie her purse, and Buck her shoes, which she slips on without bending to untie.

“Your sister was just helping me find some relief with your giant baby.”

“Oh?”

Maddie hands Eddie her coat. “I didn’t have to deal with a big baby, thankfully. Me and Chim are both—”

“Knee-high to a grasshopper?” Hen offers with a smirk.

“Yes! Thank you. But I knew Eddie would have some trouble eventually.”

Buck helps Eddie into her coat and takes her purse from her. “Well, thank you, Mads. I think.”

“You’re welcome!”

They go home, and all the way Eddie sits with her back as straight as possible to keep the baby out of her ribcage. It helps, kind of.

When they get out of the truck, Buck coming around to help her, Eddie puts her hands up into the night sky and leans back.

“Maybe if I just stay like this, I’ll feel better.”

Buck puts his fingers into her armpits. “Not if you don’t want to be tickled.”

Eddie jumps, her arms slapping down to her sides. “Buck, stop, I’m gonna pee!”

He tickles her under her arms and down her flank, and between their laughter and Eddie trying to shove her husband away from her, the baby does something that feels like an Olympic-level dive, crash landing into the bowl of her pelvis. Eddie pitches forward with a gasp, hands latching onto her knees.

Buck’s hands hover over her, his eyes wide in the dark. “Did I hurt you? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie grunts. She stands up slow, cradling the bottom of her belly, which feels much heavier now than it did earlier. A dull ache kicks up in her tailbone, and there’s a pressure between her legs that she’s never felt before.

“Eddie? You look like you’re going to be sick.”

She has to spread her legs to accommodate the sudden bulging pressure in her pelvis, and it lends her no relief like it had before. Her lungs squeeze with panic. “I think she’s coming.”

“What? Now?”

“Yes now.” She doesn’t let go of her belly, holding onto it tightly like she’s holding it in place. “I—I feel like she’s coming out, like she’s right there.”

Buck finally puts his hands on her, rubbing up and down her arms hard and fast like he’s trying to warm her up. “Okay, well, you didn’t lose your mucus plug, right?”

“My what?”

“Your—” Buck’s face flushes ruby red. “You know, discharge. It—it seals the uterus. When it, uh, when it comes out that means it’s time, I think.”

“I have discharge all the time!” Eddie cries. “There’s always something going on in my underwear!”

“Okay, um, maybe it’s not that—”

“But what if it is, Buck?” Eddie presses on her low belly and winces. “It feels like she’s between my legs, like if I move, she’ll just fall out.”

Buck’s face goes from scrunched and worried to bright, like someone flipped on a lightbulb inside his head. He even holds up a finger. “I think I know what it is! Eddie, baby, stand up straight.”

Eddie shoots him daggers. “I can’t—”

“Yes, you can, the baby isn’t going to fall out, come on.”

He takes her hands and helps her straighten her back out. The ache persists, wrapping around her hips and down her thighs. Buck stands back and just looks at her.

“Well?”

He smiles, big and white. “I think she dropped. Look at how low your belly is.”

Eddie lifts her belly. “I can feel it.”

“Can you breathe better now?”

She takes a deep breath, and between the squeezing panic, she’s able to take a deep breath without having to lift her arms above her head. The baby is definitely no longer nestled in her diaphragm.

But.

“It’s too early.”

Buck’s shoulders sag, and he comes over to her. “Eddie, no, it’s okay. This usually happens 2-4 weeks before labor. Perfect timing.”

“But what about a second pregnancy?” At this, Buck looks suddenly unsure. “I read that it could happen hours before labor.”

“Oh—”

“I want to go.”

“To—to the hospital?”

The baby shifts, and an electric bolt of pain shoots up between her legs. “Yes, Buck, hospital. Shit— Go get the bag.”

She climbs back into the truck carefully, and waits, legs spread to alleviate the bowling ball feeling, for Buck to return with the hospital bag. When he does, he tosses it into the back seats and climbs in.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay. Chris asleep?”

“Like the dead.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

They do not go to the hospital. Instead, Buck pulls into Chimney and Maddie’s driveway. Hen and Karen’s car is missing, and all the lights are off.

“Buck— What the hell?”

Buck looks at her sheepishly and takes the key from the ignition. “I don’t think the baby is coming. I just— I just want Maddie to check you out. To be sure.”

“Maddie? Maddie is drunk!”

“She can’t be too drunk, she’s still breastfeeding.”

They go up to the house anyway, leaving the duffel bag in the truck. Chimney answers their light knock before Buck’s knuckles even leave the door.

“Hey— Did you guys forget something?”

Eddie shoulders her way past him, feeling like a cowboy with the way she’s waddling. Buck says something to Chimney under his breath, but she doesn’t hear. Maddie is dozing on the couch in her pajamas, watching the Food Network on low. There’s an untouched grilled cheese on the cushion next to her, and a tall glass of water on the coffee table.

“Maddie.”

She turns and lights up when she spots Eddie. “Hi! Did you forget something?”

“The baby dropped.”

She gasps and gets up from the couch. “Oh, yay!” Her face falls when she reaches Eddie, and she touches the sides of her belly lightly. “I’m so sorry, did we jinx you? Your poor hips!”

“Maddie, can you see if Eddie is actually in labor?” Buck says, gesturing to Eddie.

“Dropping doesn’t usually mean labor,” she says.

“But it could if this is a second pregnancy, right?”

Maddie frowns, thinking. “I don’t remember when I dropped with Baby Nash. He was so small, it was hard to tell.”

“I remember the lightning crotch, though,” Chimney says, coming over and picking up half of Maddie’s grilled cheese. He takes a bite and hands it off to Buck, who shoves it in his big gob.

Maddie groans. “Ugh, the lightning crotch!”

“Lightning crotch?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” she says. “Like a big bolt of lightning right up through your lady bits.”

Oh. So that’s what that was. “But it doesn’t mean labor?”

She shrugs. “I mean, it could. Everyone’s pregnancies are different. Did you lose your mucus plug yet?”

“I don’t think so?”

“Well, did your water break?”

“Definitely not,” Eddie says. “I think I’ll know when that happens.”

“With Baby Nash it was a damn waterfall, but with Jee, it was just a trickle, so maybe not.”

”Maddie,” Buck warns, mouth full.

She throws her hands up. “What do you want me to do!”

He gestures. “See if we need to go to the hospital or not.”

Maddie wrinkles her nose at Eddie. “You want me to put my fingers in her cervix? I was never an OB, guys.”

“What?” Eddie, Buck, and Chimney say.

“No, no, just feel where the baby is,” Eddie says, pressing on her belly. “Like you did before.”

“Oh, mapping!”

Maddie lays Eddie out on the couch. She lifts her shirt below her boobs and tucks the waistband of her pants below the swell of her belly, then gets down on the floor next to her. Eddie vaguely feels like she’s getting a spell cast over her.

She starts at the top of Eddie’s belly, and she’s not gentle about it. Where the baby was previously sitting not even an hour ago is now an empty pocket of space. She’s curled up in a heap below her belly button, and when Maddie squeezes like Hen did before, her head is much lower.

“She’s definitely engaged,” Maddie muses. “You’ll probably start dilating soon, but I wouldn’t say you’re in labor yet.”

“So, no hospital,” Buck confirms.

Maddie rubs her hand over Eddie’s belly. The baby doesn’t react like she normally would, too cramped in her pelvis to do much of anything right now. “No hospital. At least, not yet. Not until your water breaks, or, you know, you start feeling contractions.”

Eddie pulls her pants up and her shirt down. She sits up on her elbows. “You mean like the prodromal labor contractions?”

“Yes?” Maddie scrubs her hands down her face. “I’m so tired, I’m sorry.”

Chimney comes over and helps her up, and Buck helps Eddie off the couch. When she’s on her feet, the pressure between her hips is immense, and she thinks when they get home she’ll have to run straight for the bathroom.

“God, this is all so confusing,” she moans, and Buck takes her up in his arms, kissing her on the head.

Chimney is holding Maddie in the same way. “Don’t worry,” she says, handing Eddie the other half of her grilled cheese. “It’ll all be over soon. Just a few more weeks left! More or less. Who knows, though.”

Eddie groans and shoves the grilled cheese in her mouth.

iv.

Eddie didn’t think much about what it would be like for Buck to come home from the store to find her sprawled out on the kitchen floor.

“Jesus! Eddie, come on, you know my heart can’t take that!”

Eddie wriggles her way out from behind the island. The grocery bags are on the counter and Buck is pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Sorry.”

“I thought you were dead.”

She groans. “I wish I was. Then I wouldn’t be in so much pain.”

Buck comes and stands over her, his hands on his hips. She frowns up at him. Then, with more effort than it should probably take for a firefighter in perfect shape to get on the floor, he lays down next to her. They barely fit.

“Your leg,” Eddie says, nudging the leg in question with her foot.

“Mm. Floor time.”

“Floor time,” she agrees. “The tile feels good on my hips.”

“Hips hurt?”

“Along with everything else.” Her hips, her spine, her legs. Hell, even her shoulder hurts, where she was shot. Both of them.

“Well, she is the size of a watermelon now.”

Eddie kicks him in his bad leg, and Buck yelps. “Thank you, genius.”

Grabbing the lower cabinet doors, she hauls herself to her swollen feet, one hand grasping her belly, because even after two weeks of the baby being curled up in her pelvis, she still hasn’t gotten used to the feeling; it still feels like she could slip out with any sudden movement.

Once upright, Eddie has to take a moment to catch her breath. Buck is staring at her like she’s the second coming of Jesus, eyes wide and sparkling, mouth pulled up in a dopey little grin. He reaches out and brushes his fingers along her calf.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, and Eddie snorts.

She looks down at him over her huge belly. She’s in a pair of his old boxers because the thought of any sort of waistband is torture, her muscle tee, pulled up past her belly button, has a stain over the left boob, she’s unwashed and unshaved, and she has cankles. She’s never felt less beautiful.

“I’m a mess.”

Buck sits up so fast he almost brains himself on the edge of the island. “No, you’re my wife, and you’re beautiful, and I love you.”

Eddie waddles over to the grocery bags and sticks her hands in. She has no intention of putting things away, but she does find a jar of Nutella, meant specifically for Christopher’s lunch, and cracks it open.

“Oh, yeah?” she says, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. She scoops out a heaping of the oversweet spread and shoves it in her mouth. “Am I really?”

Her stomach jumps into her throat and she gags. Instead of being swallowed, the Nutella gets spit into the sink in brown globs. She puts her mouth to the faucet to rinse it down.

“Well—” Buck struggles to his feet, and his gait is slightly lopsided when he comes up behind her. “Now, you’re just plain sexy.”

Eddie turns in his arms, her belly pressing huge and firm into Buck’s own. The baby shifts a little, like she knows her dad is near. Buck presses her into the sink and kisses her, sticky lips and all.

“Buck, Buck, my back.”

Without a word, Buck grabs her under the thighs and lifts her onto the counter, just left of the sink so she doesn’t fall in. Because, knowing the size of her ass right now, she’d get stuck. Her legs fall open to let him in, and she presses her bare heels into the base of his spine to pull him closer. Hands around neck, hands gripping sides, Buck kisses her deeper than he’s kissed her in a while. She can feel his hard cock press into her belly and she laughs.

“Did you really get horny shopping for groceries?”

Buck slides his hands up the back of her muscle tee and she shivers. For a split second, all the pain evaporates.

“No, I got horny coming home to my sexy and beautiful wife, who’s been having one hell of a pregnancy but is doing such a good job at it.”

Something clenches between Eddie’s legs, and it’s not the Braxton Hicks, or the lightning crotch. She pulls him closer, until she’s nearly straddling him from the countertop.

“Tell me again.”

Buck breathes into her mouth and says, whispers, more like, “You’re doing such a good job, baby. You’re so good. I’m so proud of you. Please let me fuck you.”

Eddie shoves him back with a hand on his chest. “What?”

“What?”

“You want to fuck me?”

Buck’s birthmark flushes. “Well— Yeah. ‘Course I do.”

“Even when I’m—” She gestures to her belly, sitting between her thighs on the counter like it’s a thing separate from her.

Buck follows her hands, and she swears his tongue is about to flop out of his mouth like a dog. Hands gripping onto the meatiest part of her thighs, he dives in and puts his mouth to the sliver of belly that her shirt doesn’t cover.

”Yes,” he says, and with gusto. “Especially now.”

He licks at her belly button—of course he does—and she grips the back of his neck as a zing between her legs has her flinching. She really hasn’t been horny lately, so this is new. This is nice. Still, though, she almost can’t stand the thought of a cock in her right now. Not when there’s so much baby in the way.

“Can I fuck you?” Buck says again, nosing at her belly. “I’ll be gentle. I don’t want to put you into labor.”

Maybe if she was another week or two along, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

“Mm. With your hands.”

Buck looks up at her through fluttering lashes, and he pouts. “You don’t want me to put my dick in you?”

Eddie puts her hands on her belly. “There’s enough of you in me right now.”

He leans forward and kisses her collarbone, working his way up the side of her neck until he reaches her jaw. “Mouth?”

“Mm, no. Too sensitive.”

“Fingers it is.”

Buck picks her up off the counter and carries her to the bedroom like she weighs nothing, completely forgetting the groceries. He lays her out on the bed gently, and then not-so-gently pulls her boxers down. Eddie can’t help but giggle into her hands.

“Sorry,” she says. “We just haven’t done anything in weeks.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, caressing her thighs as he kisses her neck again. “I’ve been getting off in the shower. It’s so lonely in there.”

“Well, you better do it quick before I change my mind.”

Buck’s arm goes under her neck, cradling her close while he kisses her on the mouth, and the other hand is all up in her bush, his fingers ghosting over the swollen, sensitive lips of her pussy. She jumps when he brushes her clit, and he swallows her gasp.

“So wet.”

“Already?”

“Mhm. God, I love you.”

Buck leans his upper body against her, her swollen, aching tits smushed into his chest, pressing her deep into the mattress. He holds himself up on his knee so he doesn’t push on her belly, but the baby is so big that she sinks into Eddie’s spine and weighs her down anyway.

Eddie brings her legs up and lets her thighs fall open. It relieves the pressure on her hips, but the base of her spine loudly complains, and she finds herself pushing Buck away with a huff.

He’s flushed all the way down to his neck when he looks at her, and his hand is caressing her inner thighs again.

“What?” he breathes, and she wishes he could fuck her, wishes she could throw her legs over his shoulers or have him push into her from behind, or—God, she wants to ride him so bad right now—but she can’t.

“I’m so wet, but so uncomfortable,” she whines, covering her face with her hands again. “I can’t even sleep on my back, Buck, how are you going to finger me?”

Buck looks at her with all the love in the world, then proceeds in arranging her obnoxiously-large pregnancy pillow around the front of her. He has her turn towards him and rest her belly on it so that it’s between them, then grabs another pillow and puts it between her knees. Another is propped beneath her hip. It leaves her so comfortable she could fall asleep.

“Wow,” she sighs. “If I pass out, I give you permission to keep going.”

Buck chuckles low in his throat and wraps his arm around her shoulders again. He pulls her face up to his and kisses her, hot and open-mouthed. “Still wanna do this?” he asks.

Eddie’s pussy throbs in response, and her thighs desperately try to press together to find some friction, but the pillow is in the way. She whines.

“Please.”

Buck caresses a hand down her belly, goosebumps erupting in its featherlight wake, then wastes no time in slipping a finger in. She’s so wet, so desperate, that there’s barely any give. She gasps and he swallows it. He’s closer now, and his hard cock pressing deep into the swell of her belly. She gives a little experimental thrust with this unfamiliar body of hers and the ache in her spine returns. She lays still and lets her husband finger-fuck her.

Buck can usually get three fingers in her before she’s brought to the edge, but now, with her heightened sensitivity and her hormones and not having so much as looked at Buck in weeks, all it takes is one finger, a warm, flat palm pressing against her swollen clit, and Buck mouthing at her tits through her stained muscle tee before the pressure builds, and builds, and—

“Oh, my God, Buck—”

And releases. All over the bed and the pillows and Buck’s hand, trickling warm and wet down the backs of her thighs. She’s never come so hard or so much in her life. Even Buck, panting and out of breath from his own pleasure, his hard cock pressing warm and desperate into her belly, pulls back to look at her.

“Wow,” he breathes, and takes his wet hand from between her thighs.

The pressure, though faint, is still there, and the ache from her spine is now creeping around to her pelvis. She scrambles as fast as her pregnant body will allow up against the headboard, kicking the pillows away. The stain on the sheets beneath her can only be described as a huge puddle.

“Buck,” she says slowly, staring at the puddle. “I think you broke my water.”

Buck doesn’t object when she asks to go to the hospital this time. How can he? He just tucks his dick into the waistband of his pants and helps her into a clean, dry outfit.

“I wanted you to shave my bush for me,” she says miserably once they’re on the road. The hospital bag is still in the backseats and Christopher’s school has been called.

Buck glances at her and puts a hand on her knee. He’s still flushed, and Eddie wishes she could lean over and give him road head before they get there, but she’s afraid to move right now. She has one hand holding onto her belly and the other gripping the grab handle above her head. The baby is not happy.

“It’s okay,” Buck assures her. “There’s still time. Labor can take hours. I’ll shave your whole body for you, if you want.”

Eddie’s throat gets a little thick at that. “You would?”

Buck squeezes her knee. “Eddie, I would birth the baby for you if I could. How—how are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Shaky. Still kind of wet.”

“Contractions?”

“Not yet.” She swallows and grips her belly a little tighter. “Is 38 weeks too early?”

He shakes his head. “She’s considered early term now, not premature. She’s fully cooked in there.”

“You’re sure?”

“She might need to be in the NICU for a bit, but, yeah, baby, it’s gonna be okay.” Buck looks at her. “Okay?”

Eddie lets out a breath. “Okay.”

Okay.

Not okay. Eddie has never been more mortified in her life.

The good news: She’s two centimeters dilated and officially in early labor!

The bad news: Her water did not break. Not even close. Female ejaculation, is what the doctors told her. She’s so embarrassed.

“Eddie, it’s okay,” Buck says for the umpteenth time since getting back in the car. “It was an honest mistake. Even I thought your water broke!”

“Can we please stop talking about it?” she says, pressing her face into the window. “Let me sulk.”

Buck’s hand finds its way to her inner thigh, warm and soothing. “I’m still a little hard, if you wanted to pick up where we left off. I bet that’ll make you feel better, huh?”

She shoves his hand away. “You’re never touching me again. And I want a home birth. Those doctors must hate me by now.”

“Eds, you don’t want a home birth.”

“Fine, I don’t want a home birth, but the second we get the all-clear, we’re inducing labor. Whatever it takes. I’m getting real tired of all this.”

“I thought you wanted labor to start naturally?”

She gives him a severe look.

Buck puts his hand back on her thigh, and this time she leaves it. “Whatever you want, baby. I’ve got your back, remember?”

v.

“I’m not gonna go.”

“Buck, you have to go. You already said yes!”

“Yeah, but that’s what I do— I just agree to things before my brain catches up!”

Eddie sits up. Buck is standing at the end of the bed, half dressed in his uniform. His hands are in his hair.

If she wasn’t 40 weeks pregnant and quite literally about to pop, she’d get up and stop him from pulling his hair out of his head. But she is, so she doesn’t. All she can do is watch while her husband freaks out ten minutes before he’s supposed to be at the station.

“That’s gonna be real dangerous when our daughter is Chris’s age.”

His hands go from his hair to up in the air. He does a nervous 360 in place, and when he’s facing her again, he claps his hands together. Soon, she’s going to tie them behind his back.

“I really don’t have to go,” Buck says again. “I’ll just tell everyone that it’s your due date.”

“Buck, everyone already knows it’s my due date, it’s been circled on their calendars for months.” Eddie grabs a discarded hair tie from her nightstand and pulls her hair off the back of her sweating neck. Buck watches the action like he’s going to come up with a different excuse to call out of the shift he’d agreed to cover, and if he tries that, Eddie will tie up more than just his hands. “Bobby wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t need you, you know that.”

Buck stares at her, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. “I didn’t need to say yes,” he says weakly.

“Yes, you did.”

With a groan that comes up from his toes, he flops down on the bed in his boxers and LAFD tee and army crawls towards her until his face is flush with her belly. The shirt goes up, and the belly button comes out. He kisses the angry red skin.

“Please don’t try anything else until I get home,” he says. “I’m going to be worried all day.”

Eddie puts her hand in his hair and doesn’t say anything. Buck looks up, pressing his chin into her belly. It’s firmer than it’s been, like an overstretched drumhead.

“Eddie.”

“What is there left to try!”

She’s serious, too. The second her OB gave them the all-clear to try and start inducing labor at home at her 39 week scan, they’ve been pulling out all the stops. Raspberry tea, castor oil, date fruit, acupressure, hell, even sex, since that almost worked last time.

But this time, none of it has worked. Go figure, Eddie’s been panicking about early labor for weeks, and now that it’s finally time, it’s radio silence. Nothing, nada. Even her Braxton Hicks have eased up. She’s been stuck at two centimeters for two whole weeks.

Buck is still looking at her with those pleading, nervous new-dad eyes, and she sighs.

“Okay, okay,” she agrees, pinching his nose. “The baby’s been a bump on a log all night, so I’ll just…let sleeping dogs lie, I guess.”

“Yes.” He kisses her belly again, right over her waistband where the baby in question is nestled all snug and heavy. “Leave her alone, and we can go do a membrane sweep tomorrow.”

Now, it’s Eddie’s turn to groan. “Ugh, promise?”

Buck holds out his pinky, and Eddie wraps her own around it. “Anything for my girls.” He kisses her belly one last time, then leans up and kisses her cheek, and finally gets up off the bed. “Okay, I’m gonna be late. You’re staying here?”

She quirks an eyebrow. “I might venture out to the couch, if I’m allowed.”

His eyes go wide again, and he points a warning finger at her. “Don’t do that if you don’t want me to get the baby out the same way she got in.”

“I do!” Eddie says, throwing her hands up. “But it didn’t work!”

Buck gets dressed for work, shaking his head all the while. Before he leaves, he says to her one last time, “Seriously. Just stay here.”

Eddie salutes. “Sir, yes sir.”

Eddie eventually gets up to make breakfast, making two fried egg sandwiches and two cups of decaffeinated green tea that her and Christopher carry back to the bedroom. They eat together while scrolling through TikTok on his phone, and even after an hour of belly laughing, the baby still hasn’t moved.

“What if she just doesn’t want to come out?” Christopher eventually asks.

“Then we’re sending her an eviction notice.”

“Well, you should do it soon. I want to meet her before I go back to school on Monday.”

“Why, so you can bring her in for show-and-tell?”

Christopher rolls his eyes at her. “Mom, there’s no show-and-tell in high school.”

They watch TikToks for another few minutes, until eventually Christopher gets up from the bed and announces he’s hanging out with Denny for the day.

“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay by yourself?”

Eddie clicks her tongue. She collects their dirty dishes and heaves herself from the bed. The baby slides down a little with the change in position, and for a second there’s pressure in her pelvis like a hydraulic press, but no pain follows, and the baby doesn’t even stir. Together, they waddle to the kitchen.

“You’re just as bad as Buck,” she tells her son as she dumps the dishes in the sink for later. “Yes, mijo, I am okay. Absolutely nothing is happening today, go enjoy yourself.”

Christopher looks at her belly like he doesn’t trust his sister to behave, but eventually he gets his shoes on, grabs his backpack, and calls himself an Uber Teen.

“These boys are insufferable, aren’t they?” she says when he’s gone, rubbing the side of her belly where the baby’s foot is pressing. She doesn’t get a response.

Eddie starts to get nervous about the stillness around noon. She’s been poking and prodding at her belly all morning to try and get the baby to move—not so much to piss her off enough to want to come out, but just enough for a sign of life—but she hasn’t felt so much as a hiccup. She can feel everything since the baby dropped, every stretch, every hiccup, every jab, but there’s been nothing since last night.

“Okay, little girl, now you’re getting me worried,” Eddie says after chugging an ice-cold glass of orange juice that does nothing but give her immediate indigestion.

She needs to take a walk, if not to get the baby to move, then to calm her nerves. She grabs her keys and her phone and doesn’t think about how mad Buck will be if he finds out she left the house.

The walk down Bedford Street is slow and grueling. Carrying her huge, full-term belly around is like dragging a ball and chain, and by the time she reaches the stop sign at the end of their street, she’s out of breath.

And still, the baby doesn’t move.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says, hands on her knees.

Alright, that’s it. Let Buck be mad at her, let her water break while alone and away from home. Anything so she knows the baby is okay in there.

Eddie curb-walks all the way back to the house. They haven’t tried this yet, and she doesn’t know why. With the way she can feel the baby pressing into her cervix with every asymmetrical step, they should’ve done this long before the spicy foods.

She’s halfway back down to the stop sign when a familiar black-and-white SUV pulls up beside her.

The window rolls down, and Athena sticks her head out. She takes her sunglasses off, revealing a severe eyebrow. A very Buck-like eyebrow.

“Diaz, what in God’s name are you doing out here by yourself?”

One foot in the gutter and the other on the curb, Eddie swallows hard and says, out of breath worse than before, “Trying to get this baby to move.”

Athena scoff-laughs. “Well, you’re gonna make that baby come out. When I tried walking on the curb with Harry, Michael barely got me to the hospital before he was making his grand entrance.”

“Really?” Eddie says, lifting her belly off her hips a little. She’s got enough kinesio tape on to keep a leaky boat afloat, but it’s no match for Buck’s nine-pound baby weighing her down. “She’s been still all day, and it’s starting to freak me out.”

Athena frowns at her belly. “Really?” she says thoughtfully, echoing Eddie.

“What?” Eddie says. “Is she okay, you think? Should I—”

She holds up a hand, stopping Eddie in her nervous tracks. “I think you should be curb-walking your way to a hospital, honey.”

“What?” Eddie says again, pressing a little more forcefully on her belly, giving her daughter one last chance to move. “Why? Nothing is happening.”

“Well, my momma always said it was just an old wive’s tale, but I found if baby stops moving so close to the end, then they’re ready to come out.” Athena chirps her sirens and slides her sunglasses back on. “Hop in, I’ll drive you to the firehouse so we can pick up your husband.”

Eddie puts both feet on the curb, backing away from the police cruiser. Her heart begins fluttering excitedly in her chest like a hummingbird’s wings. “I don’t feel like squeezing myself in there. I’ll call Buck, have him come get me.”

“Alright, then. Want me to wait here with you, at least?”

Eddie shakes her head. “No, I think I’m okay, Athena. No contractions yet, not even a Braxton Hicks.”

“Hm.” Athena drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “Don’t make me regret leaving you here.”

Eddie waves her off. “I’ll be fine.”

She chirps her sirens again. “If you say so.”

She gives a boy scout salute. “Promise. I’ll call Buck right now. If you think I’m in labor, I really don’t feel like giving birth on the side of the road.”

“Alright,” Athena says again, still looking unsure. “But— Head back home to wait for Buck, you hear? One of your neighbors called me concerned.”

Eddie laughs, looking around at the quiet, still houses lining either side of Bedford Street. “It was probably Doris at 4990. She’s been extra nosy since her husband died.”

Athena doesn’t drive away until she sees Eddie with her phone in her hand heading back in the direction of the house. When she’s out of sight, she puts her foot down in the gutter again and opens Google. She just wants to be sure before she calls Buck.

Does baby stop moving before labor?

Google tells her no, reduced fetal movement is always a concern, especially in the third trimester, and to contact a medical professional immediately.

But a handful of people on Reddit tell her yes, babies tend to move around less the bigger they get since they’re running out of room, and not to worry. It’s perfectly normal!

“Goddamnit,” Eddie says to herself.

She continues curb-walking home, a little quicker than before. Swiping out of Reddit and Google, she’s just about to dial Buck’s number when she steps down onto a storm drain, and her sneakered foot slips right through the slats.

“Shit!”

Arms pinwheeling for balance, she watches, heart in her throat, as her phone goes flying. It lands in someone’s front yard, out of reach.

“Shit,” she says again, and goes to pull her foot out. It doesn’t budge. Getting down on one knee carefully and hoping she’ll be able to get back up, she reaches through the grate and unties her shoe, letting it splash into the shallow water below.

When Eddie pushes herself up, she still can’t pull her foot out. It wasn’t her sneaker, she realizes with a dawning horror. It’s her ankle. Her swollen, pregnant cankle is stuck in the storm drain.

Of course it is.

Athena’s long gone, and even Doris, when Eddie looks towards her house, having left to run errands once her request for a bullshit wellness check was fulfilled, and, checking her smartwatch, Buck won’t be home for another three hours. And she might be in labor, or there might be something wrong with the baby, and it’s starting to rain.

Eddie can feel the beginnings of a panic attack grabbing hold of her chest, which cannot be good when you’re 40 weeks pregnant, when the smartwatch on her wrist vibrates. Buck’s smartwatch, which he started making her wear once she entered her third trimester, just in case she needed him while he wasn’t around and she didn’t have her phone on her.

So, this exact moment. God, she hates when he’s right.

A text from Buck is lighting up the tiny screen, and it reads, hi babies! heading out to a big fire, so i wont be able to check my phone :( pls pls call maddie if u need me. shes working today. ilysm ❤️‍🔥

With trembling, clumsy fingers, Eddie manages to dial 9-1-1 from the watch.

”9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

But it’s not Maddie that answers, it’s Josh.

”Hello, this is 9-1-1, do you need assistance?”

Eddie brings her wrist to her mouth and says, “Can you transfer me to Maddie?”

There’s a pause, then Josh’s tinny voice comes through: ”Diaz? What— Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she grumbles, then she hisses sharply as she shifts her leg in a way that has the metal grate digging into the sensitive skin of her swollen ankle. ”Ouch.”

”Not to question your intelligence, but you called 9-1-1, so obviously you’re not fine.”

“Josh— Can you just get Maddie for me instead of being a pain in my ass?”

”Sorry, ma’am, no can do. Now, what is the nature of your emergency?”

Eddie pinches the bridge of her nose and swears to herself.

“I—”

”Oh, shit, you’re pregnant, aren’t you? Like, super pregnant?”

She looks down at her super pregnant belly, then up at the darkening sky. “Uh, yeah, but—”

”Are you in labor?”

“I mean— Maybe?”

”Diaz, come on, seriously.”

“I don’t know, Josh! I might be in labor, but I might not be! I don’t— All I know is that I’m stuck. Right now.”

A pause. ”You’re stuck.”

“Yes. My foot is stuck.”

There’s some faraway typing, then Josh says, ”And what is your foot stuck in? Please don’t say the bathtub, I do not need that visual.”

“No, you idiot, my foot is stuck in the storm drain. I was— I was curb-walking, because maybe I’m in labor, and my foot went through the hole. And now I can’t get it out.”

”Did you take your shoe off?”

“Yes, I took my fucking shoe off! Can you just— Can you send the 118, please? I know— I know they just got called out to a big fire, but I really need to see my husband right now.”

If Josh notices her getting choked up, he doesn’t say anything. After a few more seconds of typing, and a brief silence, he comes back with, ”Okay, Eddie, I rerouted the 118 to your location and sent another team to the fire. Are you seriously right in front of your house?”

Eddie laughs and scrubs her hand down her face. “I’m literally a hundred feet away from my front door, yes. I should not have gotten out of bed today.”

”Amen to that, sister. Are you in any pain?”

“A little. The grate is digging into my ankle pretty good. I don’t think it’s rusty, though.”

”I meant with the whole might be in labor thing.”

Eddie bites her tongue. “Are they on their way?”

”Ten minutes out.”

“Okay, bye!” She mashes her finger into the smartwatch and ends the call.

Eddie stands in place for the ten minutes it takes for the 118 to reach Bedford Street, because if she tries to sit on the curb, her leg is twisted at an unnatural angle, and she’s already sore enough as it is. It’s the longest she’s been on her feet in weeks, and by the time the engine appears, the ambulance behind it, she feels as if she could collapse.

Buck is the first one to reach her, and she gets déjà vu to the first time she thought she might be in labor. And just like the first time she thought she was in labor, she bursts into tears at the sight of him.

“Baby, what happened? I told you to stay inside!”

She throws her arms around his neck and hangs off of him, sniffling into his ear. Someone, Hen, she thinks, since Ravi is home with the flu and Chimney is home with an equally-sick Jee-Yun, is already working on getting her foot free.

“I’m sorry,” she blubbers. “But the baby hasn’t moved, and I got scared, so I thought walking might help, but she still hasn’t—”

“Eddie, stay still,” Bobby instructs calmly. “Just hold onto Buck and try to breathe.”

“The baby still hasn’t moved?” Buck says. He lifts her shirt and places a warm palm to her belly, right over the colorful, crisscrossed kinesio tape. The baby stays still, and Eddie chokes back a pathetic sob. The baby always moves for her dad.

“No,” she says. “What does it mean? Is she— Is something wrong? Hen?”

Hen looks up from the ground, and her face is carefully schooled. “I can’t tell you, Eddie. It could mean anything.”

Buck rubs her belly. “It’s okay, Eds, we’ll bring you to the hospital and get you checked out, okay? It’s gonna be fine. Just gotta get your foot out first.”

Hen slathers more lube onto Eddie’s ankle.

“It could also just mean she’s coming,” Bobby says with a reassuring smile. Eddie has no idea who to believe. “Sometimes babies quiet down when they’re getting ready to enter into the birth canal. They need to focus.”

“Thanks, Cap,” Hen snorts. “Okay, Eddie, slowly pull your—”

Eddie pulls her foot out, and it comes free with less effort than she was expecting, sending her straight to the ground. She falls hard on her ass on the grassy median, and three sets of hands fly out towards her.

“Shit, Eddie!” Buck hollers, following her down.

Pain explodes in her hips and in her tailbone with the impact, and she knows for a fact, if that didn’t just put her into full-blown labor, that she won’t be getting out of bed at all tomorrow.

Buck and Hen pull her up by her elbows, and Hen wastes no time in running to get the gurney from the back of the ambulance. Bobby hovers nervously, hands held out and eyes wide.

“Eddie, are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, God, shit,” Buck says, hands on her belly again, cradling it like he’s cradling the baby.

There’s a tidal wave of movement beneath his hands that pulls a gasp from her, and, just like that, the baby starts kicking like she was never still at all.

“Jesus,” Buck says, eyes nearly bugging out of his head. “That pissed her off, huh?”

Hen appears with the gurney, and she abandons it on the sidewalk to knock Buck’s hands out of the way and feel the baby for herself. Her touches are more purposeful, clinical. She presses directly on what Eddie thinks is the baby’s butt, and the baby does a somersault directly into Eddie’s bladder.

Hen lets out a relieved laugh. “She was just sleeping.”

Buck grips Eddie’s arm. “Sleeping? You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. Any pain, Eddie?”

Eddie winces as she places her socked foot on the ground. “Just my ass. And my dignity hurts pretty bad.”

Hen tugs Eddie’s shirt down for her, then goes and fetches her phone from the neighbor’s lawn. “Well, we can’t do much for that.”

“Is the baby okay?” Buck asks. Bobby reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder, trying not to smile.

“It wasn’t a bad fall,” he says, “but we’ll get you two checked out, anyway. Can’t be too careful when you’re this far along. Sound good?”

Eddie lets Buck help her onto the gurney even though she could absolutely walk to the ambulance herself, and announces to the universe as she’s being loaded in, “It’s my due date! Please don’t let me go home without a baby this time, or else my OB is going to be really mad at me!”

🍼

“This is ridiculous.”

Buck appears in the mirror behind Eddie a moment later, dressed in his costume minus the wig and fake beard. He has his fist shoved into his side, and he’s wincing.

“What, the costumes?” he asks, strained.

Eddie smooths her hands over her belly, and some of the red paint on her white shirt flakes off under her touch. “Well, yeah, I really don’t think the kids are going to know who we are. But, no.” She turns and holds her hands out. “Look at me, Buck. I’m even bigger than a volleyball! I don’t know why you won’t just let me stay home.”

Buck digs his knuckles deeper into his side. “Everyone has seen Castaway.”

“I’ve never seen Castaway,” Eddie says, dropping her arms. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be. What’s the matter with you?”

Buck lets out a breath and straightens up. “It passed. You’re Wilson!”

“What passed?”

He waves her off. “I think the pancake batter was bad. My stomach’s been killing me all morning.”

“Bisquick doesn’t go bad. Who the hell is Wilson?”

Buck cradles the sides of her belly and leans in to kiss her. “The volleyball, Eds. And I’m not leaving you home alone because you’re past your due date. I don’t want to risk missing the real thing.”

Eddie huffs. A contraction starts up in the base of her spine and wraps around her sore hips, and she presses a fist into her side much like how Buck had. They’ve been fairly regular lately, coming in at steady twelve minute intervals ever since that little spill out on the sidewalk, but they haven’t been getting any stronger, and she’s only reached three centimeters dilated. According to her OB, she’s in early labor, but she’d still get sent home if they tried to show up at the hospital now.

“I could be here, nesting.” The contraction passes, and she lets out a breath through puckered lips. Buck keeps rubbing her shoulders, slow and steady.

“Baby, there’s nothing left to nest,” he says with a fond lilt to his voice. “I know the second I leave you here you’re going to do something that puts you into active labor, and me and Chris’ll be all the way at the station.”

“Because I should be in active labor! I want to be in active labor, Buck, this is ridiculous.”

Another kiss. “You gotta give the membrane sweep time to work,” Buck says. “The doctor says it can take up to a week for you to go into active labor.”

Eddie gives him a withering look. “A week overdue is inhumane. It’s cruel. I want the baby out now.”

“And I want you to be patient. Everything is happening at the pace it should, okay? We pulled out all the stops already, the—the spicy foods and the teas, and now this is the last thing. It’ll work.”

“It hasn’t worked.”

Buck wrinkles his nose, and she’s not sure if his stomach is still hurting him or if he’s actually getting frustrated with her. “Eddie.”

“Buck.”

“Guys, are you ready yet?” Christopher calls from down the hall.

Buck rubs at his own stomach. Not her, then. “It will work. It’s medically proven to work. It has worked! You’re contracting regularly, you’re— There’s been, uh, bloody show, stuff like that. Now we just need to wait until the contractions are closer together or your water breaks.”

“I—”

“And until that happens, you’re coming to trunk-or-treat with me and Chris and you’re sitting down on the couch where you can’t get into trouble.”

The baby punches Eddie’s spleen, and she wishes she could do that to Buck, but he already looks like he’s in enough pain. Sighing, she says, “Fine.”

Christopher agreed to come to trunk-or-treat at Station 118, but he refused to wear the FedEx T-shirt that Buck had found for him online, instead going with a Hawaiian shirt he’d gotten at Goodwill that makes him look like Jimmy Buffett. He disappears up to the loft the second they get there.

“Well, looks like it’s just the two of us,” Buck says, putting an arm around Eddie. There’s sweat beading at his temples under his scraggly wig, and she really hopes he doesn’t give himself heat stroke in that stupid thing.

She looks down at her belly, which had entered the firehouse five minutes before she did. “More like the three of us.”

“Hey, Buckley-Diazes!”

Chimney and Maddie appear with their own kids in tow, dressed like the Flintstones, plastic clubs and all. Maddie even has on a bright orange wig.

She adjusts Baby Nash on her hip, who’s pulling at her oversized pearl necklace and looking ridiculously cute in his purple Dino costume. “Hi, guys. Who are you supposed to be?”

“The Donner Party?” Chimney says, snapping his gum. Jee-Yun, in her little tattered dress, laughs even though she has no idea who the Donner Party is.

“The—” Buck looks down at his khaki shorts and bare chest, mostly covered by his beard, then down at the red fabric paint on Eddie’s belly. “What? No, we’re Tom Hanks and Wilson! From Castaway!”

Chimney and Maddie look at each other. “Is that the movie where he lives in the airport?” she asks.

Buck huffs. A flash of pain pinches his features and he grabs his stomach.

“Woah, method acting,” Chimney says, bopping him on the head with his hollow club. “Nice touch, Buckley.”

Almost at the same time, another contraction takes Eddie’s breath away, and the two of them double over in tandem.

“It wasn’t the pancake batter,” Eddie says, hands on her thighs. “I just got that.”

“It has to have been,” Buck says from his mirrored position. “I didn’t have anything else this morning.”

“Buck, are you okay?” Maddie asks, putting a concerned hand on her brother’s arm.

“I know what it is!” Chimney says with too much glee. “Sympathy pains! Has to be. When Maddie was pregnant with Baby Nash, I swear I never threw up so much in my life.”

“That is true,” Maddie says.

The pain passes at the same time the contraction ends, and they both let out twin breaths that make Jee-Yun laugh again. Her laughter sets off Baby Nash, and Maddie quickly corrals the kids away towards the pop-up haunted house that’s billowing smoke from the fog machine through its windows.

When Chimney heads off to go help Bobby put up the last of the decorations before the children of Los Angeles arrive to ransack their firehouse, Eddie snorts and says, “Sympathy pains.”

“Hey, it makes sense,” Buck says, still rubbing his stomach. “My leg always flares up when your shoulder does.”

Eddie pushes up on her toes and kisses him through his wiry, itchy beard. “If you got a period, we’d probably be synced, too.”

Buck makes a sad sound. “I would love to have a menstrual cycle with you. That’s so romantic.”

“God, you’re weird.” Eddie puts her hands on her hips and looks around. Most of the tables have been set up already, and some B-shift volunteers are working on filling a dozen bowls with bags of grocery store candy. “So, what can I do?”

“You can go sit down.” Carefully, Buck turns her around and pats her on the butt. “I’m serious, Eds, I want you to take it easy, and to call me if anything feels amiss.”

”Amiss.”

“Amiss! Now, sit. Put your feet up, relax, don’t do anything that’ll make me worry about you.”

Eddie turns back around and pats Buck’s bare chest. “You’ll worry anyway.”

He kisses her. There’s more sweat on his upper lip, above the beard. “Obviously. Go go go.”

“Going, going, gone.”

Luckily, the gym has been wholly untouched, devoid of any decorations and off-limits to any impending visitors, so that’s where Eddie stakes her claim. She doesn’t have to climb the stairs, or get motion sick in the service elevator, and she can stay close to the action, just in case Buck turns his back long enough for her to make herself useful. Surely, handing out candy to kids won’t break her water, but if it does—

Well, she won’t complain. Buck might, but Buck hasn’t been hauling this baby around for the last nine-and-a-half months.

Eddie rolls the blue exercise ball out onto the mat and sits down with a groan. The persistent ache in her hips and groin eases up, just a little.

Karen shows up when she’s bounced through two contractions, wearing a floor-length black dress and a wig to match. She sits down on the bench at her side.

“Hey, Wilson. How you feeling?”

“Hey, Morticia. I feel like I’m five days past my due date. You?”

Karen presses her lips together in a sympathetic line. “No results from the membrane sweep yet?”

The baby shifts, and Eddie spreads her legs a little on the ball to give her more room. “I think I lost my mucus plug last night, but the contractions haven’t gotten any worse, so who knows.”

“Bloody show?”

“A little. Still only at three centimeters, though.”

Karen hums. She gets up from the bench and comes up behind Eddie. “Are you gonna go get induced?”

Eddie sighs. “Probably not. Buck wants me to be patient.”

“Well, Buck doesn’t have a giant baby pushing directly on his vagina.”

“That’s what I said!”

Karen puts her hands on Eddie’s hips and guides her in slow, wide circles. “Here, this is what broke my girlfriend’s water. She spent an hour on a birthing ball like this and boom! Baby time.”

“Really?”

“Mhm, just keep doing this and it should get things moving. You really shouldn’t have a doctor break your water after a membrane sweep.”

“Shit, I’ll spend an hour on this thing,” Eddie says, leaning her head back on Karen’s shoulder and letting herself be moved by her capable hands.

After double and triple-checking that Eddie is good here on her own, Karen soon leaves to help Gomez, Wednesday, and Pugsley finish hanging black and orange streamers from the ambulance, and Eddie rocks herself side to side, back and forth, in circles so wide she nearly falls off the exercise ball. The movement shaves off two minutes between her next two contractions, and by the time she gets up to use the bathroom, she’s soaked with sweat and trembling with exertion. She feels good. She feels like she’s actually making progress.

“God, I hope that worked,” she says to herself as she leaves the gym, one hand on her belly and the other supporting her aching back.

The firehouse has since filled with kids, all in costume, all shouting excitedly, and the line for the downstairs bathrooms is a mile long. Eddie huffs at the sight, and decides to use the one upstairs. It’s nicer, anyway. And maybe the stairs will shave two more minutes off.

She has a breathtaking contraction halfway up, and when she checks her watch, she finds only eight minutes have passed since the last one. Buck is gonna be so pissed, she thinks giddily, and twists around to search for him through the sea of kids and parents down in the bay. She finds him at one of the candy tables, fake beard being tugged on by a little boy in his mom’s arms. He’s in his element.

The pressure on her bladder grows, and she pulls herself the rest of the way to the loft with a determined grunt. Happy as she may be that Karen’s magic seems to have worked better than any induction, medical or self-inflicted, this must be what the Donner Party felt like climbing through the Sierra Nevadas.

Christopher is on the couch playing video games with Mara and one of the kids from the high school that decided to stop by when Eddie reaches the top of the stairs. They pay her no mind as she hurries past as fast as her pregnant body will carry her.

She relieves herself successfully, and lets herself sit on the toilet for a few extra minutes, relishing in the way the squatted position feels. Her pelvis muscles relax, and her hips open, blooming like a beautiful flower. She moans, leaning back against the cold tank. This is way better than the exercise ball. Her water could break like this. Hell, she could give birth right here and she’d be happy.

“Eddie, you in there?”

Eddie sighs at the sound of Hen’s voice. Buck probably sent her to check up on her. “Be right out!”

“Okay, uh, we’ve got a bit of a situation out here.”

A bit of a situation? What could that possibly mean for Eddie? She hasn’t been on heavy duty since her first trimester. Sighing again, she hoists herself from her porcelain throne.

It’s when she’s washing her hands that she notices the pressure on her bladder hasn’t gone away, and realizes while drying her hands that the pressure isn’t in her bladder at all but somewhere deeper. Farther back, maybe. Her spine? She’s not sure, but it only increases as she leaves the bathroom.

Everyone but Bobby is in the loft now. Hen and Chimney are kneeling on the floor by Buck, who’s curled up on the couch without his beard or wig in the fetal position. His bare chest is shiny with sweat, and his face is scrunched. Ravi is standing with Mara and Christopher, all three of them looking worried. The kid from Christopher’s school is nowhere to be found.

A contraction squeezes at Eddie’s low belly, the strongest one yet. She grabs the wall. “What’s going on?” she says, strained.

“It’s his appendix,” Chimney says. “We think it burst.”

“What?” Surely, she wasn’t in the bathroom that long. “I thought you had your appendix out when you were a kid!”

Buck groans, says, “Must’ve been my tonsils,” and promptly vomits onto the carpet.

“Okay!” Ravi says, and he and the kids head downstairs.

Hen gets up. “We gotta get him to the hospital before he goes septic.”

Buck moans at that.

Getting him downstairs and into the ambulance is a whirlwind of activity. Bobby has already pulled the streamers off the rig and pushed tables clear of the bay doors by the time they get down there, and the crowd of children and their parents are cleared away by B-shift, standing around the perimeter like spectators at a car accident. Eddie watches it all feeling a little detached and a lot in pain. The pressure hasn’t let up, and neither has the contraction, which has long-surpassed the one-minute mark.

Buck is loaded into the back of the ambulance, looking ridiculous in his khaki shorts and no shirt, followed by Hen and Chimney. Ravi hops in the cab. Bobby puts his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and says, “Do you want me to drive you?”

The deep, aching contraction peaks—

And something pops.

“Um,” Eddie says, looking down at the growing puddle between her feet. Definitely more a gush than a trickle. The pain has passed but the pressure persists, and she has the sudden, overwhelming urge to sit down on the floor. “I think I should come with you guys, actually.”

Fred Flintstone and Gomez Addams look out at Eddie from the back of the ambulance, eyes wide, jaws on the floor. Buck groans and says, “Ugh, Eddie.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” she says, knowing damn well she absolutely did it on purpose. “Ah, man, I didn’t want a Halloween baby.”

“That’s why—” Buck throws up again, just clear of Hen’s shiny Oxfords.

Bobby’s hand is still on her shoulder, squeezing, now. Urgent and fatherly. “Eddie, do you want me to page dispatch for an additional RA unit, or would you like me to drive you?”

A memory suddenly flashes at the forefront of Eddie’s mind. Her father’s truck, a towel spread out beneath her, her mother’s high, worried voice warning her not to stain it, because it’s one of the nice towels from the guest bathroom.

“No,” she says, and her voice sounds hollow to her ears. “I don’t think I can wait for another ambulance.”

A quick glance goes around that she ignores. She climbs in with Bobby’s help, and sits down at Buck’s feet. Chimney looks terrified. “What do you mean, you can’t wait?” he says.

But Hen knows. She takes one look at Eddie’s face, and the hand on her belly, and knows. “She means we need to get going.”

”Eddie.” Buck whines again, shifting his feet out of her way slightly.

“Good luck, you two. I’ll meet you there,” Bobby says, and with a nod to his paramedics, slams the doors shut. Eddie jumps with the impact.

Chimney focuses on Buck, who’s spiking a high fever now, and Hen on Eddie. She touches her belly lightly, and finds it rigid. The pressure is worse than it’s been, heavy, squeezing, like the baby is forcing its way out of her right here in the ambulance. The firehouse would be fine, but giving birth in the ambulance is less than ideal.

Her dad didn’t speak a word on the ride to the hospital. Neither did Shannon, in the seat next to her. The whole way, Eddie felt like she’d done something wrong. She kept quiet with every contraction, and prayed she didn’t stain her mom’s towel.

“Eddie,” Hen’s voice floats through the hazy memories. Her eyes are wide and searching. “Are you okay?”

Eddie swallows and finds her throat tight and dry. “I think I’m panicking.”

She smiles. “I think that’s normal. But you need to breathe, okay? Buck needs you to breathe.”

Oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face, Buck gives a weak thumbs up. He’s on his back, his knees bent. His hands are gripping his stomach hard enough to bruise.

“What are you feeling?”

Eddie leans back on her hands and parts her thighs on the gurney. More fluid rushes out of her, but neither Hen nor Chimney react if they notice. “Like I’m about to give birth.”

“Do you feel like you need to push?” Hen asks, putting her hands on Eddie’s knees. “Because with the membrane sweep, and how far along you are, I’m thinking you might dilate quick now.”

The pressure is immense, but Eddie doesn’t think she has to push. She shakes her head. “I want an epidural,” she says. “I didn’t get one last time.”

Hen looks sad at that, like just by looking at Eddie she knows it wasn’t her choice, and squeezes her knees. “We’ll make it in time. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands.”

Buck throws up in agreement. Luckily, he removed the mask first.

Eddie knows when they get to UCLA Health that they must look ridiculous. Her huge belly is smeared with fake blood, her husband is shirtless and in torn khakis, and the paramedics that bring them refuse to leave. Only Ravi does, because someone has to return the ambulance to the station.

Buck stays on the gurney and Eddie is given a wheelchair, and through his pain and rising fever, he grabs her sweating, shaking hand before they’re wheeled off in opposite directions and says, “I love you.”

No one held Eddie’s hand when she was brought to that tiny military hospital in El Paso. The second she was checked in, Shannon went off to call his parents, and her dad stayed a few steps behind holding her jacket instead of her. Fresh out of high school, woken up in the middle of the night by a wet bed, all Eddie had was the tiny little boy in her tummy, and she clung to him desperately, all the way to the delivery room.

It’s been a long time since she thought about any of this.

Eddie squeezes Buck’s hand and doesn’t want to let go. Another contraction, this one seven minutes since the last. Her throat is thick and her chest is tight, but she manages to squeeze out, “I love you, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck says. His face is red and there’s vomit in the corner of his mouth. “I love you. I’ll be with you soon, I promise.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, and hopes that it’s true.

Chimney goes with Buck up to surgery, and Hen goes with Eddie to L&D. She tells her in the elevator that Ravi and Bobby are going to pick up Maddie, Karen, and the kids, and that trunk-or-treat will be handed off to B-shift. She assures her that everything is fine, everything is handled.

Eddie hasn’t dissociated in a while, but she suddenly finds herself in a gown, on a bed, with Hen at her side and her belly full of monitor bands. Because the baby is big and you’re so overdue, she recalls a nurse saying, but she doesn’t recall her putting them on.

“How you doing?” Hen says in her kind voice, her eyes soft behind her thick-rimmed glasses.

A contraction steals her answer, and Hen pats her hand through it. There’s two nurses in the room, hurrying around getting instrument trays and a bassinet set up. One of them situates herself between Eddie’s legs at the end of the bed and pushes her blankets to her knees.

Eddie barely hears the warning before cold, gloved fingers are inside her, and then she’s instructed to push them out. She’s six centimeters dilated. Things are happening so fast.

“Not really,” Hen says. The nurses leave the room, busy, preoccupied. Off to the next laboring mother. “We’ve already been here an hour.”

Eddie checks her watch and finds that to be true. “Oh,” she says. She shakes her head. “Um.”

Hen leans closer, draping herself over the guardrails on Eddie’s bed. Any closer and she’d be in the bed with her. “Are you still panicking?”

She swallows and nods. “I’m remembering how it was with Christopher. How—how it was with my parents, you know?”

“Well, your parents aren’t here,” Hen says firmly. “We’re here. Your family.”

“Buck’s not here,” she says in a tiny, pathetic voice. The baby shifts, sending a shock of pain through her, as if to remind her that half of Buck is here with her, at least. “How long does an appendectomy take?”

Hen opens her mouth to speak, but suddenly the room is full of people. More nurses, a doctor. Not her doctor, though. Not her OB. Just some guy.

The doctor says behind his mask, “Thirty minutes to an hour, typically, but it might be longer with your husband.” He sits down at her bedside opposite Hen and lowers the handrail. “Hi, Mrs. Diaz, I’m the anesthesiologist that will be administering your epidural today. Are you currently having a contraction?”

Her belly squeezes in anticipation, but no contraction follows. She shakes her head. “No.”

“Fantastic. If you could just sit up for me, that would be great.”

The epidural hurts worse than the worst of her contractions, but the relief she feels is immediate. A warm numbing sensation trickles down her spine and into her legs, and the nurses help her get situated back into a comfortable position before she’s not able to on her own.

Everyone leaves. Eddie suddenly wants to cry.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Hen says, leaning over the handrail again. She thumbs under Eddie’s eyes. “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Eddie snorts wetly. “Wrong Tom Hanks movie.”

“Well, there’s a lot of them.” She moves her hands to her belly. They’re warm and heavy and comforting, but they’re the wrong sort of warm, heavy, and comforting. “Would it be better if I shouted ’WILSONNN!’? I hear that enough from Chim.”

Eddie puts her hands overtop Hen’s. The baby calms, and they both sink into the numbness now spreading through her hips and low belly. It’s weird, but it’s kind of fantastic, and she briefly hates her mother for not letting her get an epidural with Christopher.

She starts crying in earnest. This whole pregnancy has truly made her feel nineteen-years-old again.

“What if Buck doesn’t make it?” she asks miserably, thumb rubbing like a nervous metronome over Hen’s wedding band. “What if— We had a plan, this wasn’t— He said he wouldn’t—”

”Hey,” Hen says. “No matter what happens, you’re not alone, Eddie. You have me.”

“And me!”

Wilma Flintstone appears in the doorway. Her bright orange topknot has been replaced by auburn waves, and her chunky necklace is sticking out of her purse. She hurries over and sits on the bed at Hen’s side, hand latching onto Eddie’s thigh through the blankets. The touch is muted and fuzzy.

“Chimney just told me that Buck should be out of surgery soon,” Maddie says, unable to hold back a relieved smile. “Everything went well.”

“See?” Hen says to Eddie. “Buck should be out soon.”

Eddie doesn’t tell them that Buck will probably be stuck in a recovery room afterwards. She doesn’t tell Hen and Maddie that even if he makes it out of surgery in time, there’s no way they’d allow him in the delivery room.

One of the nurses returns, and Hen and Maddie hold both of Eddie’s hands while her dilation is checked again, even though she can’t feel anything. The nurse announces she’s nearly in transition, and leaves the room again, saying something about women supporting women, so lovely to see!

More blankets, a cup of ice chips. Someone turns the TV on to a Taylor Kelly news report and someone else switches it over to PBS. Eddie doesn’t want to coast through the birth of her second child in a fog, but she can’t seem to help it. She’s suddenly totally, inexplicably tired.

“You should get some rest,” Maddie says from the recliner.

Hen makes a sound of agreement from Eddie’s other side. “Keep your strength up,” she says. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Eddie closes her eyes and lets herself sink into the fog.

She wakes up in the throes of transitional labor. It’s so intense that it’s almost painful, even through the epidural that’s turned her legs to lead balloons. She gasps the second she’s conscious, and pushes up on the bed like she can escape her own body.

“She’s coming,” Eddie says, and she’s never been so sure of anything in this pregnancy than she is of this. “I need to push.”

Hen is gone and only Maddie remains. She jumps up from the recliner and sticks her head out into the hall, hollering for the doctor. Eddie can’t hear anything but what her body is telling her. Can’t hear anything but the pounding of her pulse in her ears. The pressure is all-consuming, and so is the terror.

“I don’t— I don’t remember what to do,” Eddie says when Maddie comes back over. She reaches for her hands and Maddie gives them over willingly. “Maddie—”

“Yes you do,” Maddie tells her. “This isn’t like driving a car, Eddie, okay? You don’t need to know how to do it, you just do it. This is what your body was made for, okay? Listen to your body.”

Eddie nods without realizing she’s even moving her head. “I’m listening.”

She pushes. An onslaught of doctors and nurses flood into the room, but Eddie doesn’t care. She pays them no mind. As far as she’s concerned, it’s just her, her baby, and—

The contraction ends and Eddie stops pushing at her OB’s instruction. She flops back into her crinkly hospital pillows and looks at Maddie with wide, scared eyes. Her heart jumps into her throat.

“I need Buck. Where— Where is he?”

The door to the delivery room opens and Chimney sticks his head in. He’s in a mask and scrub cap, but Eddie can tell just by looking at his eyes that he’s smiling.

“Did we make it?”

Maddie gets up, letting go of Eddie’s hand with one last squeeze. “Just in time.”

Buck is pushed in on his own bed, and everyone makes room for him like this was the plan, like this is allowed. Eddie stares as he’s situated right at her side.

“He’s still a little loopy,” Chimney warns, and pats Buck on the chest. “Hey, Buckaroo, you with us?”

Buck snorts and opens his eyes. They’re swollen and glossed over, but he’s here.

“Huh?” he says.

“Ready to meet your baby, Dad?” says Eddie’s OB from between her legs. Eddie is vaguely aware of her saying something about another contraction gearing up, and to get ready to push again.

“Huh,” Buck says again, this time less a question and more just a breath. He blinks at Eddie, and his face blooms, warm and red. “Wow, you’re really pretty.”

Maddie and Chimney laugh, and they give both of them kisses on their sweaty foreheads and leave. Buck is still gazing at Eddie with a dopey smile. The pressure ramps up, and Eddie reaches blindly for his hand.

“Woah!” Buck says as she leans forward and pushes. “What’s going on?”

“Baby,” Eddie says through gritted teeth.

“Honey,” Buck says with a grin in his voice. Then his eyes droop and he starts to snore.

“Mr. Buckley,” says one of the nurses, and he snorts awake.

“What happened?”

“Your wife is having a baby.”

Buck looks at her. She stops pushing and leans back. He looks down at their hands, then back at her face. He’s still blushing, and Eddie hasn’t seen him this red since their first date.

“My wife?”

“Yes, Borat,” Eddie’s OB says. “She’s crowning.”

“Woah.” Despite having just had major abdominal surgery, Buck leans forward and looks between Eddie’s legs. He flops back into his pillows, going from red to green. “Woah!”

It goes like this for a while. Buck, through his waning anesthesia, is ridiculously obnoxious, but he’s as supportive as he’s ever been, cooing over his pretty wife, letting her squeeze his weak hand, giving her words of encouragement even though half the time he has no idea what he’s talking her through, and Eddie starts laughing through the pushes. The only pressure is in her belly and beyond. Her chest feels light, her limbs feel loose. She’s happy.

God, she’s so happy, even though her husband is only half here.

She’s told to relax for a few minutes while they work on getting the baby’s shoulders out. She’s not stuck, they assure her. Not even close, despite her being so much bigger than Christopher. Everything is going smoothly.

Blinking sweat from her eyes, Eddie turns to Buck, who’s still gazing at her like he’s seeing her for the first time.

“Hi, lady,” he whispers, voice raspy. “My wife is having my baby.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Buck nods. “I’m so proud of her.”

Eddie has done a pretty good job at keeping the tears at bay, but this has her getting a little misty-eyed. And then the door opens and in walks her first baby with his stupid Hawaiian shirt, and she cries.

“Woah,” Buck says, watching Christopher come around to the other side of Eddie’s bed. “Is that the baby?”

Christopher scrunches his nose. “What?”

“Don’t mind him, mijo,” Eddie tells him, reaching for him. “He’s just high.”

“Oh. Nice.”

“He looks just like me,” Buck blubbers, and now they’re both crying.

Eddie pulls Christopher into her, putting her lips to his curls, smelling him, breathing him in. He smells the same as he did fifteen years ago.

“Oh, my baby. I love you.”

“Love you, Mom.”

“Alright,” says the OB. “I’d say two more pushes and she’ll be here. Ready, Eddie?”

Buck sniffs. “Ready, Freddie.”

“You’re doing great, Mom,” Christopher says. He leans his crutches against the wall and perches on the bed at her side. Eddie grabs both of her boys hands, squeezes until they’re both hissing in pain, and pushes.

“Almost there,” the OB says, and motions to the closest nurse, who drapes a blanket over Eddie’s chest. “One more. You’re doing fantastic.”

“Really?” Buck says, and she nods.

“Almost as if she’s done this before.” She winks at both Eddie and Christopher. “Alright. Ready?”

“This is happening so fast,” Buck moans. He lets go of Eddie’s hand to cover his face. “I’m not ready.”

“Oh, my God,” Christopher says. “Buck. Lock in.”

Eddie laughs as she pushes, and she doesn’t have enough air in her lungs to say it, but this is how it should be. This is exactly how it’s supposed to be.

And then she’s here. Nine months and a dozen false alarms and the baby that was nothing but fruit on a size chart and feet pressed into ribcages is laid on top of the blanket on Eddie’s chest.

She cries immediately, and Eddie thinks, Yeah, she’s definitely a Buckley-Diaz.

Buck is too shellshocked to reach over and cut the cord, so Christopher does it for him. He pulls himself along Eddie’s bed unaided, and takes the pair of surgical scissors when they’re handed to him. His face is so bright it’s as if he’s at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Eddie tucks the tiny, wailing baby under her chin and rubs her back with the blanket. She doesn’t shush her, wouldn’t ever tell her not to cry, but she does soothe her, whispering, “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay, mama,” into her tiny ear.

Christopher sits back down at Eddie’s side. “This is so much better than that stupid trunk-or-treat,” he says.

“Oh no,” Buck finally says, voice thick and shaking. “It’s Halloween?”

“Yeah,” Christopher says, poking her in one of her fat little arms. “Baby’s haunted.”

Buck sniffles, loud and obnoxiously wet. He’s curled on his side and is pouting at the sight in the bed next to him. His pillow is wet with tears.

“Wow,” he says.

“Mr. Buckley,” says one of the nurses, putting a hand on Buck’s leg. “We should really get you to your recovery room now.”

Buck ignores him. He says to Eddie, “Your husband is going to be really upset that he missed this.”

“Yeah, probably,” Eddie says. The baby calms on her chest. A pink knit cap is tucked over her bald head. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The locks on Buck’s bed are kicked and he’s pulled towards the door. Eddie knows, just down the hall, is a plethora of people waiting for the good news. Their family, who, through this entire pregnancy and all eight years of Eddie being in LA, have never once given her reason to be afraid.

“What way?” he says, reaching out to hold her hand one last time.

Eddie squeezes before letting go. She looks down at her daughter, then up at her son, whose birth was a nightmare but who turned out to be a dream, and says, “Unforgettable.”