Twenty-Three
“Two hundred eighty-nine bottles of beer on the wall. Two hundred eighty-nine bottles of… oh. Maybe that’s inappropriate considering our setting.”
“I think it’s fine, Xavier.”
“No, I don’t want to be perceived as a negative influence so early on in this life. It’s fine. I’ll change it. Two hundred eighty-nine bottles of milk on the wall. Two hundred eighty-nine bottles of milk.”
He pauses.
“You okay?”
“Now I’m worried I’m mom-shaming. I’ve heard that phrase. Is that what I’m doing? Bottles of milk. Should it be bottles of formula? Or is that discouraging natural feeding? Two hundred eighty-nine mammary glands of milk on the wall.”
“No!” Dean and Sam say simultaneously.
“Well, it’s definitely not that,” I say, groaning slightly as I pull myself up to a sitting position from where I was lying on the giant bear pointed in the opposite direction as Xavier.
“How about root beer, Xavier?” Dean suggests.
“I like root beer,” he nods.
“There we go,” Dean says.
Xavier dives back into his song and I head for the desk to call Eric. Bellamy hasn’t been progressing as quickly as they would like her to, so about an hour ago they started giving her Pitocin to encourage her contractions along. They paired it with an epidural to help her get some rest and she’s been trying to sleep to help her get through the rest of labor.
A few moments later, Eric comes to the door and ushers me through. Bellamy is awake and seems to be moving along a lot quicker than the last time I saw her. She’s sitting on a labor ball, bouncing as she breathes through a contraction.
“I thought the epidural was supposed to take away the pain,” I say.
Bellamy definitely doesn’t look as if she’s not in any pain.
“Sometimes they don’t take full effect. It took the edge off, and she was able to rest a little bit, but then the pain came back. They don’t want to give her more medication if they don’t have to, so she’s getting through it,” Eric explains.
I go to Bellamy and run my hand over her sweaty hair. “Is there anything I can do?”
Without saying anything, she reaches up and takes my hand. Her other reaches for Eric. He and I look at each other and smile.
“Xavier’s log. Stardate… early August. Maybe later. I’ve lost track. Bellamy has been in labor for approximately four thousand hours. No end is in sight. Morale is dwindling. Supplies running low. God help us all.”
I put my phone back in my pocket.
“It was just a message from Xavier,” I say. “How are you doing? Need anything?”
“For this baby to be out of me,” Bellamy says.
“I would offer to squeeze you like a tube of toothpaste to help you along, but I don’t think that’s considered an appropriate tactic,” I say.
She nods. “I appreciate your willingness.”
“I’m going to go check on the guys. I’ll be back.”
“Tell them I really appreciate that they’re here, but they don’t have to stay. They can go home and rest.”
I lean down to kiss Bellamy on the top of the head, then rub Eric’s back encouragingly as I walk out of the room. This time when I get to the waiting room, I find Xavier facedown on the enormous teddy bear. Dean is sitting on the floor nearby, scrolling through something on his tablet, while Sam sleeps on a bed he’s crafted out of several of the waiting room chairs.
It looks a little bit like one of the vending machines exploded. One of the small tables overflows with wrappers and bottles from the various snacks and drinks they’ve bought since we got to the hospital. Another table has the remnants of at least a couple of trips to the cafeteria.
“Everybody hanging in there?” I ask.
“It’s a little touch and go,” Dean says. “How are things going with Bellamy?”
“Still working on it,” I say. “She really appreciates that you guys are here, but she knows you’re tired and it isn’t the most fun in the world to be here waiting. She says you can go home and we will let you know when the baby gets here.”
“No,” Xavier says, his head popping up from the bear. “We’ve been here this long. This is our reality now, and it cannot change until we have seen the conclusion. We can get through this. I can start the song again. Let’s do ginger ale.”
“Start it on the inside, Xavier,” Dean says. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
Xavier’s face ends up right back in the teddy bear, and I lower myself down to sit next to Dean.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Looking through the pictures from Ashley’s social media again. I’ve run them through a reverse image search trying to connect them to something, but they aren’t coming up. Which means she took these pictures herself, rather than downloading them. So now I’m trying to isolate images in the back and on the edges to try to figure out where they might be,” he explains.
“Finding these places could be really significant,” I say. “Or it could mean nothing. That’s the thing we have to remember. Ashley was thirteen years old when she took these. Girls at that age tend to not make a whole lot of sense all the time.”
“That’s true,” he says.
“What about the poetry and captions she has on her page? Does any of them stand out to you? They seem to be fairly standard stuff for a young teen girl. Trying to figure out emotions, dealing with her identity. Some of them talk about having feelings for someone,” I say.
“But there’s nothing to indicate that might be this Prince Charming older man,” Dean says.
“Not directly. She talks about its being wrong that she wants him the way she does. But honestly, that could just mean he’s a friend’s brother. Making it
