Steve woke to Kayla insistently shaking him. He roused sleepily with a bit of an edge at the sudden tug from his peaceful slumber and had a bit of a scowl on his face when he opened his eyes. He replaced it with concern, however, when he saw Kayla’s tear-filled eyes staring back at him.
“Baby, what is it?” he demanded. “Are you sick?”
Am I sick, she thought to herself. No, not sick. Actually, yes. Yes, she was. She was sick to her stomach over what had happened and what she was terrified it was going to mean. What it was surely going to mean. She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say these words that were going to be her unraveling. And she would, too. She would unravel if she said them. And that was to say nothing of what would happen to her husband. Kayla opened her mouth several times, but she couldn’t make any sounds come out. Steve sat up very straight, seriously afraid for whatever was happening to her.
“Kayla, you’re scaring me, what is it? What?!” he insisted when all her lower lip did was tremble.
Steve’s pulse was racing, and a terrible thought came to him. What if this wasn’t his Kayla anymore? What if she had jumped, somehow left her behind, and she was destination Kayla again? What if this body had come back to its true self while they were sleeping, and she suddenly found herself here when the last thing she remembered was that night they’d jumped into? What if the missing time was too much for her, and she was too scared to speak? The thought that that could happen had crossed Steve’s mind before, but he’d never explored it. Until now. He grabbed her by the upper arms, his voice wavering. “Sweetness, do you know me? Do you know where you are? What about Stockholm? Baby, do you remember Stockholm?” he begged desperately.
Kayla nodded, her eyes on him so warily he just couldn’t understand it.
“Prove it! Say it, Kayla!”
“Wha—wha—twen—twen…” She was trying to say it, and she knew she was terrifying him, but she was lost in the pit that dread digs.
“Twenty questions?” he offered hopefully.
“Mm,” she confirmed tearfully, “twenty ques—”
She didn’t get the rest of the word out, because Steve had grabbed her so hard it almost knocked the wind out of her. “Thank God! Jesus, baby, what is it? Tell me, do you need the hospital?”
At these words Kayla finally let herself fully break down. She curled up onto Steve’s lap and sobbed. Was God punishing her? Them? What could either of them have done in their lives that was so deplorable, so unforgiveable as to punish them with a baby to love that would inevitably be ripped away? Taken forever from their bond? How could this happen to them? What was the justification for anyone, man or God, to punish them so cruelly. It wasn’t that Kayla let herself break down, it was that her resolve had crumbled.
Steve was at a loss. He didn’t know what to do for her. He didn’t think she was any sicker than she was yesterday, that wouldn’t have done this to her. Was someone dead? Shawn? Caroline this time? But people had died before, and they’d stop being dead the moment they’d jumped, so he wasn’t sure that could be it, either. What was happening?
“Sweetness?” Steve said very softly as he smoothed his palm over and over her hair. “I need you to tell me what’s wrong now, baby.” His voice was strong but very gentle. “Come on, now.” He nudged her with his knee, encouraging her to lift her head. When she did, he helped her dry her face, which didn’t stay that way. She took several shuddering breaths one after the other to try to stabilize herself, and then Steve set his wife at arms length away from him in the bed. “Now tell me what it is, Kayla.”
So, she did. In a very small and strained voice. “I think I’m pregnant.”
Steve’s first reaction was to not react at all. Then he swallowed.
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.
“Pretty sure.”
“Did you take a test?”
“Not yet, but … I feel pregnant. It all fits.” And it really did. Her breasts were terribly sore right now, and she’d been queasy almost 24/7 for days. She realized that she’d shown heavy signs even on their honeymoon. The fatigue, the sex drive, the weird mix of voracious appetite coupled with food aversions that were the cornerstones of pregnancy. She let herself feel her belly right where her baby lie, and she shivered. The skin was so warm beneath her palm and hard as a basketball just below her bellybutton. She thought back to her last period and realized it wasn’t timed exactly right and that she’d mistaken it from early pregnancy spotting. She didn’t know how far along she was, and she’d need to go take a test, but she’d already done this twice, and she knew in her heart it was true. “I’m sure, Steve.”
Steve didn’t move, and neither did Kayla. Her expression was fearful; not of him but of what lie ahead. Pain. Heartbreak. Loss. She waited for the same reaction in Steve, but after a few long moments of that expressionless silence, that wasn’t the reaction he gave her. Instead, a large smile spread across his face. His eye sparkled, and she watched as the vein in his neck quickened.
“Another baby?” He swallowed hard. “You’re giving’ me another baby? My god, Sweetness,” his voice broke, “you’re having a baby!” In one fluid motion Steve got up on his knees, swept her up into his arms, and pulled her into a kiss that reached for her as desperately as his arms did. Kayla was rigid as he held her, unable to hold him back, but she did kiss him back, because her natural response to being kissed by this man was always to kiss him back. Steve inhaled and exhaled with heavy sighs and wondrousness, the early morning sun throwing shafts of light upon the foot of the bed. “Sweetness! Oh, Sweetness!”
Kayla was shocked at his reaction. This was not what she was expecting at all. She was expecting him to scream in pre-emptive mourning. She was expecting him to curse the invisible hand moving them around like pawns on this spiteful chess board. She was expecting him to get angry and sad and livid. But he didn’t. He got … joyous. He was the happiest man in the world. She was expecting him to be mad like she was, but now that he wasn’t, she was mad at him, too. For not understanding the unfathomable impact this was going to have on them and forcing her to explain it to him. A flash of fury raged through her.
When Steve kissed her temple and her forehead, and then took her face in his hands and wiped the fresh tears she’d continued to shed at his beautifully heartbreaking reaction, Kayla’s fury fizzled, and all she saw was her beautiful Steve. The father of this baby – the father of all her babies. He kissed her lips lightly and sweetly. “I’m so happy, Kayla. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, Sweetness, please, I don’t want my baby to be so sad.”
It was that last sentence. The inflection of his voice on the very last word that told her. Oh, Steve. Oh, baby.
“I don’t want you to be sad. Because I’m not.” He shook his head with conviction, but she saw his throat tighten. “I’m not. How could you telling me that we made something so beautiful make me sad?”
Steve fell silent as a quiet misery struggled within him. He stared into her shiny, blue eyes, and Kayla knew. That his reaction was just as she thought it would be, and that he was trying to hold off the truth of it for as long as he could. Now the pain in her heart doubled at the look in his eye.
“Steve.” Kayla cupped his face with her palm and looked at him with sympathy, but Steve’s shook his head and removed her hand. He couldn’t take the sympathy. He couldn’t. He wasn’t ready.
“No,” he rasped. “Not yet.” She started to say more soothing words, but he couldn’t hear them and stopped her again, barely holding himself together. “Not yet, baby, please,” he whispered beseechingly. “Let me have this another minute before I fall apart.” Kayla nodded then closed her eyes to find strength as Steve swallowed the lump in his throat. They were still on their knees facing each other when Steve tipped her chin with his finger so she’d open her eyes. “Say them again? Sweetness, tell me again, please?”
Kayla choked down a sob and nodded. Then she smiled. She found a place inside of her that could push away the reality. Push away that they’d never have this baby … or worse that they would. She found that place and lived in it for as long as Steve needed her to, and she let herself feel it so that she could share this with him genuinely. She didn’t want to pretend. She wanted to feel the joy he was seeking so they could have it together.
“Steve …” She curled her hands into the sides of his face. “I have … the most wonderful news to tell you. I’m pregnant. You’re going to be a daddy again. We’re having a baby.” She didn’t cry, and her voice was her own. Somewhere within her she found the strength to do what Steve needed. And it felt so … blissful. For this moment, it felt beautiful. The life they were supposed to have just kept on happening to them, and she was awed. Happiness was a choice. Wasn’t that what she’d told him? For this moment, her choice was to be happy.
Women aren’t the only ones who have dreams of parenthood and how that parenthood would begin, plenty of men do, too, and Steve was one of those men. He’d had his own dreams about how Kayla would tell him of the babies their love made. With Stephanie he didn’t get anything like his dream, even if he did get his beautiful daughter, whom he wouldn’t trade for anything. It was closer with Joe, he only wished he was fully conscious and Kayla wasn’t in hysterics; but his little man was worth everything they went through to have him. Now there was … a third baby. They’d made another baby, and this time he needed his dream. He’d gotten it in the hotel in Italy the second time around, but this was somehow different. Not only because it was with his own prime Kayla this time, but also because this was a different baby. So, he needed to hear it like this before letting himself acknowledge the grief that threatened to consume him the moment the otherwise happy words left his wife’s lips. Steve blinked his eye slowly, enjoying the sound of these words so he could keep them in his heart.
“Thank you, Sweetness,” he said simply, the smile on his face just starting to falter. He wanted to feel his baby. He wanted to rub Kayla’s belly and connect with his child, but he couldn’t yet. If he did it right now he would break down; maybe in a couple more minutes. Kayla saw the emotions surfacing and put her own feelings on the backburner so she could shift her strength, now, to supporting her husband. Who was just about to need her terribly. “I love you,” Steve said. “I love you.”
“I love you more,” she replied, her voice very steady. She picked up Steve’s hand and held it to her heart.
“Oh, I doubt that,” Steve rasped back.
Another wave of nausea came over Kayla, forcing her to end this moment. She looked into his eyes apologetically and ran to the bathroom. There was nothing left in her stomach to come up, so Steve looked on helplessly as his wife dry heaved. After splashing cold water on her face and brushing her teeth she felt a lot better, but the moment of suspended reality was over.
They stood apart from each other, now, neither having a clue where to go from here. Kayla leaned against the wall outside the bathroom door, Steve stood on the other side of the room beside the bed, and neither made an immediate move to change that. Steve asked her again if she was sure it wasn’t the atropine, and she assured him that this time it wasn’t.
“It’s just that I don’t remember you being this sick with the others,” Steve said.
“I was really sick with Stephanie.” Steve reacted to that with a brief flash in his eye, then a knowingly regretful look that he was not really there with her for most of the time she was in this stage of pregnancy with Stephanie.
“Is there any way you could be wrong?”
Kayla shrugged. “Yeah. A blood test is the only sure way to know. But … I’ve done this a couple times, and I would not have come in here and done this to you for nothing. If I wasn’t sure.”
“How far along?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
Kayla got very mad very quickly. “I’ve only just realized it, myself, Steve, I’m still trying to figure it out!”
Steve took an impatient breath. “Sorry.” He looked away and started to pace. “How … how far do you think?”
Kayla had thought about this briefly and quickly deduced what she had a hard time understanding. “I think I’m – I think it’s 12 weeks.”
Steve snapped his head around. “What? H-hh-how? You would never let a missed period go. Wait – you got your period last month, I know you did, right after we got back from Hawaii.”
“I thought I did,” she agreed. “But I would not be this sick if I were only four weeks long. I mean, it’s not impossible, but – no.”
“You took your pill every day?”
“Yes, I promise you I did! The next morning after we arrived I found them like I always do, and I had taken it before we jumped in the day before, so I just kept taking it, and I never stopped. But … it’s not always effective, this is 1987, things … I dunno. Maybe I shifted the time of day I take it and it threw things off? My period in August was light, I only remember because the one after Hawaii was light, too, and I just don’t remember what my periods were like 20 years ago, Steve, I’m sorry, I just don’t! Pills change, my body’s changed! It could have been implantation in August and spotting in September, and now I’ve missed it completely yesterday, because there’s just nothing! And all the other symptoms add up, and … and …” She was screaming now, her emotions no longer under her control, and Steve let a tear finally slip down his face watching her and knowing his heart was going to break more every day from here on out that they didn’t jump as his baby became more and more real with every passing day. Kayla set her head back against the wall and sqeezed her eyes shut. “Oh my God, Steve.” She started crying again and slid down the wall to the floor, burying her face in her bent knees.
Steve went to Kayla, picked her up off the floor and sat on the foot of the bed with her across his lap. They held each other, then Kayla moved to sit facing him as she held on to his hand, his thumb rubbing across her smooth skin.
“What are we gonna do?” Steve finally asked. They both felt this question plague their hearts, he was just the one who verbalized it. He sounded so lost. Kayla shrugged.
“Does it matter?” Her voice was small but had a hard edge to it. “There’s nothing we can do that will change that it’s happened.” Steve’s eye hardened and looked away from her, but they didn’t drop their hands. “Whether we jump before it’s born, after it’s born, give it up, or abort, we created it. Everything happens, jumping doesn’t change that it happened.”
“I know,” he said softly.
“It’s forever no matter how many times we jump, and it will never have existed anywhere but in this body living in this timeline.”
“I know!” he flared. Kayla didn’t react, she knew how he felt. “Should I run to the drugstore? Get a test to be sure?”
Kayla shook her head. “No, they don’t make pee sticks yet, I have to pee in a cup.” Then she gave a humorless laugh. “The first time I had mistaken the poisoning for being pregnant. This time we mistook being pregnant thinking I was being poisoned again.” Steve shook his head and adjusted his patch. Then he took Kayla’s hand still in his own and placed it on his cheek in an effort to center himself. “We can go to the Emergency Center, I can take the blood test there.”
Steve nodded. “Well then let’s go.” He got up off the bed and headed into the bathroom.
“Steve, I can’t just show up like that after two days of being out sick, it’ll look suspicious.”
“Suspicious? Where do you think you are, Kayla the real 1987, sneaking around behind Jack’s back? We’re married here! We’re allowed to get pregnant!”
“I … right. Sorry, I’m not thinking. I’m—I’m not—I don’t know what I’m doing. I just—I’m not feeling well …” Steve watched as she emotionally detached right before his eyes, crawled back into bed, and drew the covers up over her head. Steve’s heart broke.
“Kayla, I—”
“I’m tired.” He went to her and tried to pull the covers down, but she pulled them back up. “I just want to sleep.”
Steve got back in bed and spooned her against him. He wasn’t going to let her withdraw, because he needed her as much as she needed him. They laid that way for just a few minutes before Steve couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled against her so that she was lying on her back. She looked up at him with sad eyes, but she did look. Steve was leaning up on his left elbow and lifted her shirt up to reveal her belly. And he saw it. He saw the very small bump straining against her firm muscles that had not yet been stretched and weakened by age and preivous pregnancies. This was this body’s first pregnancy, and her smooth skin was very taut over a tiny little bump that was unmistakeable. Finally, he rubbed his hand over her abdomen where her skin was so very warm and felt his baby nestled in his wife’s womb beneath his hand. The connection was almost instantaneous for Steve, as he knew it would be, which was why he’d tried to avoid this. Tried to protect himself for as long as he could. But he’d made a baby, and it silently called to him. Steve let out a stifled noise and kissed Kayla’s belly. Then he laid his head on it and cried silently when he felt his wife’s hand upon him with comfort.
“I love our baby, Kayla,” he said. “I love you, and I love our baby.”
“I know you do,” Kayla replied, her voice consoling him even as it reached for consolation of her own. “I do, too.”