Chapter 60 - The Indignity of It All.

"And then he sent me to my fucking room like a god damned five year old." After more than an hour, Brian was still ranting about how mean Emmett had been to him all day. "I'm his fucking employer! I'm paying him twice what his salary is at Torso. You'd think he could at least do a few little things around the house to help us get ready for the baby. But, noooooo. Not Princess Em! He's too good to help me put together a simple closet organizer system. He's too tired to install the shelves I got for the guest bath. He's too special, too this or too that. He just wants to sit on his ass all day and force me to watch movies. I'm so sick of sitting still all day watching movies. Fuck, he's driving me crazy, Justin."

"Closet organizers?" Justin interrupted, trying to get Brian onto another - any other - topic of discussion.

"Yeah. I saw these great closet systems online so I ordered one for the baby's room and one for the hall closet. They're going to be perfect," Brian replied, only momentarily distracted by the lure of organizational products. "Of course, it turns out the directions on how to assemble them are in fucking Korean. So, as soon as he saw that, Honeycutt refused to even try to get them put together. I mean, there's pictures. How hard can it be?"

"Brian, you are supposed to be resting. Not putting together closet systems," Justin argued, kneeling down on the bed behind his exasperated Prego Man and beginning a shoulder massage to try to relax Brian a bit.

"Which is exactly why I asked Honeycutt to do it instead, but he refused," Brian stated with irrefutable logic. "Besides, I'm sooooo bored. Just sitting around doing nothing all day is hard work. I have all this shit spinning around in my head - I see all this stuff that needs done around here - and I can't stand it. I've got to do something other than sit here and worry about everything."

"What's there to worry about, Brian? You know that the contractor is coming back next week to finish most of the stuff. I bet he'd put together your closet thingeys too if we asked him," Justin tried again to reason with the irate man. "You should be resting now, while you can. From what I've read, it's a pretty sure thing that we're NOT going to get any rest after the baby's born. You should take advantage of the peace and quiet now, while you still can. Bank some extra hours of nap time."

"I wish I could. But every time I tried to lay down today I kept having more of those Braxton-Hickey things. It was kind of freaking me out. At least if I'm up doing shit I don't seem to have more contractions. I think they're freaking out Kevan, too," Brian added as an afterthought. "Every time I have a contraction, the baby gets all quiet and doesn't move for a half-hour or so. I got worried about it a couple of times and had to poke at him a bunch until I felt him kick back. Which, he really didn't like either."  

"You've been having contractions all day?" Justin immediately zeroed in on the most disturbing part of Brian's rant.

"Well, not ALL day," Brian clarified. "But three or four times. Don't freak out though, Sunshine. They always went away after a minute or two. Still, they're not exactly fun, no matter what the fucking books say about them supposedly not hurting."

"If you were having contractions, why didn't you call me, Brian?" Justin demanded, more than worried at this new development.

"Why would I call you? It was no big deal. I'm fine. I'm actually getting pretty good at breathing through them," Brian assured his nervous blond. "At least I WAS doing fine, until Honeycutt starting squawking, flapping his arms at me and running around like a chicken with his head cut off. You have no idea how hard it is to concentrate on breathing with a big Nellie-Bottom Queen freaking out in the background. . . "

"Okay, that's enough," Justin declared and started to get up from the bed. "You have to relax, Brian. All this stress is bad for you, your blood pressure and the baby. No more. I'm going to draw you a nice warm bath in our brand new jacuzzi tub. Then I'll make you some camomile tea. And, if you're a good boy and stop clamoring about Emmett, when you're done with your bath, I'll suck you off and drain all that tension out of you through your big, luscious cock." Justin shuffled off to start the bath, muttering a little too loudly as he went, "at least that will shut you up for about fifteen minutes. . . I hope."

"I heard that, Sunshine," Brian warned his retreating lover, but stopped protesting as soon as the part about getting sucked off finally filtered through to his brain.

It still took more than an hour to completely calm Brian down and get him to lie back in bed. They propped him up with extra pillows so he could rest without being flat on his back or side and that seemed to do the trick - no more contractions. Brian eventually drifted off to sleep, giving Justin time to call Emmett and beg him to come back again on Friday regardless of Brian's overbearing, overly-organized manner.

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Two tired men were sitting on the bar stools at the kitchen counter the next morning. Brian had been restless again all night. Justin lost track of how many times he was awakened by Brian rolling out of bed to pee again and again. At least there had been no attempts at nocturnal cleaning.

Justin rubbed his face, yawned and stretched for the third time. He stared down into his bowl of Cheerios thinking that he really should try to get up and make something more appetizing for Brian's breakfast this morning. Brian, sitting next to him, was merely playing with his own cereal, stirring the milk around with a spoon and watching the floating 'O's drift lazily around the bowl. Justin could already tell Brian wouldn't be eating much of the soggy cereal, but he just didn't have the energy to get up and cook anything. Wasn't the utter exhaustion supposed to hold off until AFTER the baby was born?

"Brian, would you like me to make you an omelet or something instead of cereal?" Justin offered unenthusiastically in spite of his fatigue.

Brian seemed distracted and it took a couple minutes before he registered what Justin was saying. He smiled affectionately at the again yawning blond next to him and shook his head. "Don't bother, Sunshine. This is fine. I'm not hungry at all this morning."

Brian looked down desultorily at the unwanted mess of soggy Cheerios and then picked up his bowl. He started to stand up, intending to dump the remains of his uneaten breakfast down the sink, but suddenly froze when he was only half off the stool. Justin was too groggy to notice Brian's unusual behavior at first. It wasn't until the bowl of cereal dropped back onto the countertop, spilling all over for the second morning in a row, that the sleepy teen looked up and discovered there was a problem.

"Brian?"

"Something . . . Shit, I swear that something inside me just fucking popped," Brian muttered in a barely audible voice, holding onto his belly with both hands, hunched over his stomach protectively. "Oooonnnnhhhh! Shit. Another contraction. This one's . . . Fuck this one's much . . . " Brian's voice tapered off into nothing but panting as he tried to focus on just breathing.

Justin abandoned his own cereal remains and jumped up to tend to the obviously distressed pregnant man. "That's right, Brian. Good. Just keep breathing. That’s good."

Justin rubbed calming circles through the fabric of Brian’s shirt as he talked his partner through the contraction. It didn’t last long, but Justin thought that maybe this contraction seemed stronger or at least sharper than the ones Brian had endured before. Brian was still panting even after his muscles had started to relax. The beautiful, expressive hazel eyes looked a bit panicky.

“That was a bad one, Justin,” Brian admitted as Justin helped him to sit back down on the bar stool. “I think that maybe something is . . . wrong. I felt . . . I don’t know what, but it just felt like something inside snapped when I stood up. And this contraction felt different somehow, like it was lower or something. Shit. That was NOT fun.”

Justin glanced at his watch. He noted that it was still about thirty minutes until he could expect Cynthia and Emmett to show up. More than enough time to make sure that Brian was comfortable, get him back to bed and hopefully get him to stay there. The fact that, for once, Brian didn’t try to argue with him when Justin took hold of his arm and started to lead the man back to the bedroom was a big glaring warning sign. Brian was moving very gingerly, still holding onto his belly as he walked with short, mincing steps.

“Stop,” Brian ordered before they were even halfway down the short hallway. “It hurts.”

“What hurts, Brian? Where?”

“My back hurts - more than usual - and there’s a sharp, stabbing pain here,” Brian rubbed at his lower abdomen, low down below the protruding belly. “I think . . . it’s time to go see Chiefy, Sunshine.”

Justin took a deep breath to stem his own incipient panic attack. “Okay. I agree. Let’s get you to the car. Don’t worry, I promise not to forget you this time,” Justin tried to lighten the intense mood with a joke.

It took them more than ten minutes to walk the length of the hallway, out the back door and around to the driveway in the rear of the building. Justin wanted to push Brian faster, maybe pick him up and carry him, anything to get the man to move faster, but Brian was obviously in too much pain to move very quickly. Just as they got to the car, Brian moaned and doubled over as another contraction came on. Justin paused and talked his partner through the pain, remembering to time this one. It lasted only a little more than a minute but he could tell it was as strong, if not stronger, than the last one. When Brian seemed able to move again, Justin hoisted him into the passenger seat of the Jeep.

“I’ll be right back, Brian,” Justin said in as calm a voice as he could manage under the circumstances. “I’m just going to run inside and get your bag. I’ll be fast, I promise.”

“Hurry,” was all Brian managed to say in reply.

Justin sprinted back to the house, grabbed Brian’s pre-packed hospital bag and his cell phone and rushed back to the car. The entire trip took him less than 90 seconds. He quickly hopped into the driver’s seat and tossed the bag into the back, handing the phone to Brian.

“Speed dial #9 is Chiefy’s cell phone. You call her while I drive, okay?” Justin directed as he jerked the gear shift into drive and the car lurched forward.

“Oooh,” Brian grunted as the car’s abrupt movement caused him to rock in his seat. “Justin, please don’t kill me before I get to the fucking hospital. Just drive carefully. And, if possible, don’t hit any potholes.”

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In spite of Justin’s demands for immediate attention for his laboring partner as soon as they reached the hospital’s ‘Maternity’ ward, nothing seemed to happen for an exceedingly long period of time. Justin thought that as soon as they showed up, Brian would be scooped up onto a gurney and rushed back to a delivery room. Instead, they were told to have a seat in the lounge area nearby and Justin was given a clipboard with more paperwork to fill out. When Brian started into another contraction while they were sitting there, finally a nurse came over and began to see to the patient. It took another ten minutes to get Brian into a room and then there was a further delay while about ten different people wandered in and out looking like they were as lost as Justin felt.

Brian was busy just trying to control the pain he was feeling. He barely looked up when someone would come over to take his temperature or check his blood pressure or pulse. The contractions were still coming on, pretty regularly now, about every five minutes. He was pretty oblivious to all the activity going on around him - he could only concentrate on one thing and that was breathing. He seemed to be fine as long as he could focus his sight on a particular spot and just think about breathing in and out. But, whenever someone would walk across his line of vision, distracting him from his focus, the pain would seem to wash over him and he’d forget to breath until he heard Justin’s voice again with its inherently calming cadence telling him when to breath in and when to breath out.

Chiefy arrived about fifteen minutes after they were shown into the hospital room. In between contractions she asked Brian a buttload of seemingly random questions and then prodded at his belly for what seemed like an inordinately long time. Justin was about to completely lose it and start yelling at her to just ‘DO Something’ when she finally got a determined look on her face and nodded to the nurse standing behind her waiting for instructions.

“Well, I’m not sure what’s causing you so much pain, Brian,” Cheify gave her highly educated and completely unhelpful opinion. “But, it definitely looks like you’re into active labor already, so ready or not, it looks like you’re having a baby today. Let’s get to it!”

After that, everything seemed to run like clockwork and everyone appeared much more efficient than they had previously. The primary nurse in charge of Brian’s case had the patient out of his clothes and into a hospital gown in mere seconds. Then she was forcing him to lie back on the bed and was inserting an IV line into his arm and giving him a nasty looking, thick, chalky-white glass of something to drink that she said was an antacid that would prevent Brian from becoming nauseated. Next came all the wires - monitoring leads to a heart monitor, a fetal heart monitor, BP and temp monitors.

Finally, when Brian looked about as uncomfortable as it was possible for him to look, the Anesthesiologist arrived and gave him a spinal block. Justin hoped that the injection didn’t hurt more than the actual contractions. He was pretty grossed out by the size of the three and a half inch long spinal needle that the doctor used to puncture Brian’s back before a syringe was attached and medication was slowly injected into his partner’s spinal fluid. It looked excrutiatingly painful to the leery teen, but he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to scare Brian.

It must have worked though, since within minutes, the lines on Brian’s forehead smoothed out and he relaxed back into the pillows with a huge sigh. Unfortunately, this also seemed to be the signal for a bevy of nurses and doctor’s assistants to invade the room. Justin was taken aside to be prepped for the operating room - he was given a dark green gown and cap and instructed on how to wash his hands. Brian was immediately rolled off to who knew where. Justin didn’t even get to say goodbye to Brian before his bed disappeared around the corner of the long hospital hallway. The nurse told Justin they were going to prep Brian for surgery and when everything was ready, he would be escorted to the operating room so he could be with his partner. Then, everyone in the labor room disappeared and Justin was left completely alone, blinking and wondering what exactly he was going to do.

That’s when Justin remembered that he hadn’t had time yet to call his mother or Daphne or Cynthia or Emmett or . . .  any of the myriad of people who needed to be called. First, he called Daphne and shouted at her to get her ass to the hospital NOW! Justin’s long-time friend squealed into the phone so loudly that he was worried about permanent hearing loss. Daphne told him she would call his mother for him and then would meet him at the hospital ASAP.  

Next Justin called Cynthia, who was, for her, almost frantic. She and Emmett had arrived at the house about a half hour earlier. When no one answered the door or the phones, both started to worry. Cynthia was just in the process of trying to get a locksmith to come break into the house for her so she could make sure that the boys weren’t lying dead inside. She was so relieved when Justin finally called her that Justin thought the imperturbable Executive Assistant was about to cry. But, she almost instantly pulled herself together and volunteered to call Justin’s school for him as well as deal with Debbie Novotny and handle the expected media onslaught.

Which was good because that was all the time Justin had before a nurse was back to usher him down the hallway to an operating theater. The first thing he saw as he entered was Brian lying spread-eagle on the operating table, buck naked, with coppery red betadine wash dripping all over his belly. It looked almost like his partner had been crucified. There were what seemed like dozens of people in the room and even more seated in a glass fronted balcony area above staring down at the spectacle - not that Brian was generally averse to public nudity, but it really did seem like a bit much to Justin. The complete lack of any dignity afforded to Brian was galling. Justin was simply glad it wasn’t him lying there for all to examine.  

Justin was led up to the head of the operating table and directed to a seat next to Brian’s head. His partner was awake but seemingly feeling nothing at this point. He smiled loopily up at Justin and reached over to hold the youth’s hand. Then someone brought in a metal stand with a surgical drape hanging down. The contraption was wheeled over to Brian and set up so that nothing could be seen from the middle of his chest on down. Justin was incredibly grateful for the drape that prevented him from seeing exactly what was going on down there - the last thing he wanted was to faint as soon as he saw blood or do something equally as embarrassing.

“Are you ready for this, Sunshine?” Brian asked the worried looking blond who was gripping his hand a little too tightly for comfort. “Fuck, aren’t YOU supposed to be saying that shit to me? I’m supposed to be the worried one here, not you. Buck up there, kiddo. You better start in with reassurance and shit before you run out of time.”

“Sorry, Brian,” Justin was instantly contrite. “How about, ‘everything’s going to be fine - just relax’. Does that make you feel better?”

“Not really, Sunshine. You’ve got to say it like you actually mean it,” Brian teased his nervous boyfriend.

The mutual reassurance league was interrupted at this point by the entrance of Chiefy in all her short, stocky, begowned and begloved glory. “So, who’s ready to have a baby?” She announced, smiling from behind the plexiglass surgical face shield attached to the lighted visor secured to her brow.

And, in far less time than it took to get prepared for the surgery, the doctor was slicing and dicing away at Brian’s belly. She gave Brian and Justin a brief explanation of each step of the surgery as she proceeded. Justin, the squeamish one, wished that she wasn’t being quite so explicit about things like incisions and suctioning fluids and such.

Brian didn’t seem nearly as worried about the situation as Justin had expected him to be considering his partner’s general dread of hospitals. The patient just looked happy, a little anxious but not too over-worried, and expectant. Brian smiled at Justin pretty much the whole time, clearly busier looking forward to getting this whole ordeal over with than worrying about the actual surgery. It made Justin’s job a little easier but also left him a bit at loose ends - if he wasn’t busy being the strong, reassuring one, he wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do and it gave him far too much time to worry about things. But, every time Justin started to get too antsy, he would look over and see Brian’s hopeful little smile and be reminded of where this was all going.

Within not more than five minutes, Chieify announced that she was disengaging the baby’s head from the pelvis and then, without further ado, a bloody, squirming bundle of wrinkled red skin was being handed off to Justin

“Congratulations Brian and Justin,” Chiefy declared as she ducked back around the surgical drape. “You are now officially parents!”

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