Chapter 156

Adam was awake when Rain made it back to the room they were sharing together. He’d had multiple surgeries over the last several days, so he’d been asleep a lot, but she was pleasantly surprised at how well he was recovering.
Cheryl helped Rain back into her bed and put her leg up on a device that would help it to heal. The technology was a little behind what Rain was used to in Michaelanburg, but she trusted the doctors and the rest of the medical team that had been working on her since the attack.
“How’s Mist?” Adam asked with a smile on his face. He was propped up so that she could see him. Rain adjusted her pillows and used the button to move the back of her bed up a bit so she could more easily see him. “She’s good. And you’ll never guess what she found out before her surgeries.”
Adam’s eyebrows raised. “What?”
She didn’t blame him for not even trying to guess because he wouldn’t be able to. Rain could hardly believe it, and she’d had plenty of time to think about it. “She’s pregnant.”
Adam’s face didn’t change for the longest moment. He just looked at her--unblinking. Eventually, he took a breath, his eyelashes fluttered, and he asked, “She’s what?”
“Yeah, she’s going to have a baby. The doctors told her.”
“Really? Oh, wow, Rain. That’s amazing.” As happy as he’d looked when it first registered, that faded after a second, and his mouth turned down at the corners. “Poor Walt. It’s too bad he’ll never get to meet his child.”
“I know.” Rain couldn’t help but frown at the thought as well. “But… at least he’ll have one, which means that Mist will have a piece of him to carry with her.”
“That’s true,” Adam agreed. “Is she happy? I mean, about the baby.”
“Oh, yeah. I think it’s the only thing that’s keeping her going right now.” A memory flashed before Rain’s eyes, and she envisioned her friend in the midst of that fire and the explosions that were rocking the building they’d been in when Rain had come across Mist in the dark. She’d wanted to die then. Mist had told her to leave her behind because she wanted to be with Walt. Thank goodness Rain hadn’t listened to her or else the baby would’ve been lost, too.
“So… Mist is going to carry her own baby to term inside of her and then give birth?” Adam said, looking over at her. “Can you believe that?”
“It’s starting to sink in,” Rain said. “I’m honestly so surprised that she was even able to get pregnant after the situation with her IUD.” Rain remembered all of the blood Mist had lost when that piece of metal she’d tried to remove from her uterus had essentially torn up her insides.
“It’s going to be so amazing to see that baby growing inside of her. I wonder what that’s even like. I mean, I’ve never seen a pregnant woman. Even when we were in Quebec, I didn’t see one. Did you? Not one that I realized was pregnant anyway. You can tell after a while, right?”
“Yes, you can tell.” As part of her medical studies, Rain had to learn all about how babies used to grow inside of their mothers before the procedure to remove them and put them in the glastic incubators that they would eventually either flourish in and come out to be viable children, or if they failed to thrive, they’d be dumped from the incubators--killed.
“Can you imagine what that will be like?” Adam’s smile widened as he imagined a pregnant Mist. “She’ll be walking around with a baby inside of her. I bet she’ll be even more beautiful than she is now. I mean… not as beautiful as you are, of course.”
Rain chuckled. “I’m not so insecure that I can’t handle you saying that my best friend is beautiful,” Rain told him.
“Good.” Adam didn’t say any more about that. “Do… do you think… will you ever… what do you think about babies?”
“What do I think about babies?” Rain repeated, feeling her face heat up. “I think they’re cute. I think they’ll be much happier in a home with parents as opposed to in a nursery with a bunch of women who don’t really care about them. I think there’s just some innate bond that a mother has with her child, you know? If she’s allowed to carry it in her body herself. The pain of childbirth is probably something a woman and a baby always have to unite them.” She knew there were plenty of ways to keep childbirth from being painful now, but it was still uncomfortable. It was dirty and messy and wonderful.
“I wonder if I’d be able to do that,” Adam said, staring up at the ceiling. “Be a dad. It’s gotta be hard. I bet a lot of dads learn from their own fathers. They probably find out what to do and what not to do from watching their own parents. But I don’t have that. Not to mention… everything I’ve been through. If I ever had a son, I might mess him up really badly, you know? I might not be able to teach him how to be a man.”
Rain wished that she could more easily reach him. “I don’t think that would ever happen, Adam. You’d be a great dad.”
He turned to look at her then. “Do you really think so, or are you just saying that because you’re being nice?”
“I mean it,” Rain said. “You might not have had the model of a father growing up, but you definitely know what not to do. Just like Mist will be a wonderful mother because she will love and nurture her baby, experiences we never had as a child, you will be a great dad, too.”
Tears began to form in his eyes as he said, “Thanks, Rain. I really appreciate that.”
“You’re welcome.” The next part of the conversation they needed to have would have to be who did he want to be the mother of his children. Rain wasn’t sure if she was ready to talk about that yet, but she had a feeling that the reason he’d asked her what she felt about babies was because he was trying to figure out if she wanted to be a mother.
“You’d make a great mom, too, Rain. I mean, if you want to. You’re so loving and treat everyone with such kindness, I think that would be good for a child. And you’re so smart, too. You can teach your kids all about medicine and anatomy. Do you think you’ll want to work as a medic after the war is over?”
Rain nodded. “I do. I hope that I can learn from the Quebecians and maybe bring some of our technology from Michaelanburg to them.” She wondered how much information about the medical and technological breakthroughs the Mothers had made were kept on the computer Lightning had copied. It would be great if she had access to the chemical compounds and other scientific information she’d need to help the Quebecian medics replicate the advances they’d made in Michaelanburg that had never been shared with the rest of the world.
“Do you think you’ll have time to be a medic and a mom?” Adam asked.
A smile crept across her face. “Of course. And… a wife. You know, if anyone ever asks me to marry him.”
Adam looked away, his eyes focusing on the ceiling again. Rain saw the color filling his cheeks, and she knew he was embarrassed, but in that cute shy way he got whenever he wasn’t sure of himself. She didn’t expect him to officially ask him to be his wife in the middle of the medical unit, though they had talked about it. That wouldn’t be very romantic. She honestly wasn’t even sure how it was supposed to go, other than the man asking the woman to marry him. She’d never been to a traditional wedding, nor had she seen one on any programing because the Mothers were very clear that the way that Sameies got married in Michaelanburg was quite different from the olden ways when men and women got married. They didn’t want to repeat the same traditions the men had forced upon women for so many thousand years.
She wondered if Adam knew how it was supposed to go. Maybe he’d ask Seth or someone else.
Or maybe he had changed his mind and didn’t want to marry her, so it wouldn’t matter anyway.
“I love you, Rain,” Adam said. “You know how much I love you?”
She nodded. “I know.”
“I have no idea what will happen next in our lives, but I am certain I can make it through anything, as long as you’re with me. Do you want to be with me?”
It wasn’t a proposal yet, but it would definitely do for now. “Yeah. I wanna be with you, Adam.”