Against All Odds ☮ Closed
February 16th 2015, 11:30 AM
She couldn’t scream. It just wouldn’t come out.
The noises she made were more described as muffled groans and intense sobs.Tears were streaking down her cheeks and she felt as if her rib cage was cracking underneath her skin from how quietly she retained control over her vocal expression of pain. She felt swollen and blown up like a balloon, then catered out to doctors who made huffing examples of how to breathe, looking like bloated monkeys with air in their cheeks. She saw this whole shuffle as ridiculous, how they just scrambled around over a women going through extensive pain and treated her like a bomb. She figured she should have just had him at home, could almost feel the calm, positive silence of it as she squeezed the bed sheets so tightly, she could feel the mattress ripping beneath her grip.
“Caden…” she breathed, her hand reaching out as she fought tears, a small, embarrassed peek of a smile crawling onto her lips as she felt his skin embrace into hers. She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it hard, her eyes closing as her face scrunched with another push.
“Get him out, get him out, get him out,” she whispered insistently, desperation soaked deep into her eyes as they burst open and into Urchin’s blue oasis. It’s all they’d wanted for what felt like forever now, each day past the original due date like gambling; exciting and nerve-racking and just a matter of time before something extreme took place.
For all the pain that washed through her every crevice, she couldn’t decide if she’d hit the jackpot yet. It just didn’t feel right. It felt like fighting, it felt like war. Her silent panic just hurt her heart and all the limbs she owned. Any minute now, she’d just explode, the pain expanding within, the tears flooding from her helplessly. They’d been waiting for this day and Maddie just couldn’t wait til it was over.
“Here he comes!” she heard, a strangled groan of relief escaping her as more tears surged.
“Another push, you can do it!”
She couldn’t breathe when she heard that.
You can do it.
Those words printed in bright letters to the back of her eyelids and she just cried harder.
They sunk into skin, lived within her soul and danced with her heart.
You can do it.
Maddie realized how much doubt she carried. She realized how she’d been told ever since she could remember listening, that she couldn’t, when she was living proof she could.
The world just terrified her so much. And she was being given a wealth of opportunity to fail. And that’s always what she’d been prepared to do. But now, with all of this on the line, there was something to do it all for. And she could hear people who truly believed in her tell her, she could do it.
She never realized how much she needed those four words.
“You can do it, babe,” she felt Urchin say, his voice melting into her like a blessing.
She nodded along, jaw tense, and knew it herself.
She could do this.
Like the miracle he was, he screamed for her, and the sound echoed like bells. Her head fell back and Maddie couldn’t believe she still had more tears left in her. She sobbed and felt Caden’s hand leave her momentarily, the sound of happy, chattering blurring into deluded words. She kept her eyes shut and didn’t open them until she felt Caden’s hand returned on her, running back through her long, gold hair. She blinked them open, battling through the liquid that no longer burdened her with quantity.
And that’s when she knew she’d hit the jackpot.
He glowed and she smiled in awe, in an unfaltering amazement. She couldn’t believe it, but she cried more. And carefully, he was placed in her arms.
Maddie wasn’t really sure what was home anymore, but if she could have put a person down as an address, she’d choose him, a million times she’d choose him. She barely knew this little guy and she loved him more than she had ever loved herself over the entire course of her life. He was bright pink and confused and crying and so tired and she just knew. She knew that this was the reason she’d been put on this earth. She felt like it all finally made sense.
“Hello,” she whispered over him, laughing in between her breaths.
Everything about him was perfect and it was just the beginning, just the first damn chapter.
She shook her head and had to tear her eyes away to find Caden’s above them both, locking them there for a moment in an unspoken agreement. This baby was their world. Against all odds, they would live every waking moment to give this baby everything they never had. They said it time and time again over the course of these past few months, but Maddie could tell they meant it now. They had their purpose.
“Against all odds?” she got out weakly, eyelids heavy.
“Against all odds,” he agreed.
And nothing ever sounded so much like love before.











