Chapter 103 Eli

Chapter 103 Eli
Violet's Pov

The first real contraction hit at the top of the stairs.

Not the building pressure I had been carrying through the last several hours. This one was sharp and immediate, and it came with a certainty that was entirely different from everything that had come before it. My hand went to the wall. Helen was already beside me.

"I know," she said before I could speak.

"Now?" I asked.

"Yes." She put her hand under my arm. "Let's get you to bed."

We made it to the room. I sat on the edge of the bed. Helen began her preparations with the efficiency of someone who had done this work for thirty years and did not waste motion.

"How long?" I asked.

"Not very," she said. "He's been ready for two weeks. Your body caught up tonight."

"Jacob." I looked at the door.

"He's handling the room downstairs," Helen said.

"I know that. I need him up here," I said.

Helen went to the door without arguing. She called down the corridor. I heard the low exchange of voices, then footsteps on the stairs.

He came through the door holding his left arm against his ribs. His face was tight. His eyes found me immediately.

"How bad," he said.

"The baby is coming now," I said. "How bad is your arm?"

"Bad enough that Helen is going to have opinions about it." He crossed to the chair beside the bed and sat. "Not bad enough that I'm leaving this room."

"I need someone downstairs," I said.

"Hal came through the eastern gate ten minutes ago," Jacob said. "Caius is with him. Eric and Stephanie are handled."

"Darius?"

"Out of the outer building and on his feet." He looked at me steadily. "Everything outside this room is being managed. I am staying here."

Helen glanced at his arm with the expression she reserved for people who pushed through things they should not push through. "You will need that looked at properly after."

"After," he agreed.

The next contraction came.

I pressed both hands flat on Eli and breathed through it exactly the way Helen had shown me to breathe over the course of the last several months. When it peaked I focused on Jacob's face. He held my gaze through the whole of it. He did not look away, did not say anything unnecessary. When it passed he exhaled with me.

"Good," Helen said quietly.

"How close?" I asked.

"Very." She prepared what she needed. "Talk to each other. It helps the time between."

Jacob leaned forward in the chair. His right forearm rested on his knee. His left arm stayed pressed hard against his side.

"Tell me something," I said. "While we wait."

"What do you want to know?"

"What were you thinking," I said, "when you wrote those letters. Every week. Knowing they might not be getting through. What kept you writing?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"You," he said. "Specifically you. Not the idea of you. The specific person who stood in a forest clearing and told me about her visions for the first time and checked whether I was going to be careful with it."

"Were you?" I asked. "Careful with it?"

"I was careful with that," he said. "I was not careful enough with you. Those are different things."

"Yes," I said. "They are."

He met my eyes. "Violet. I have been trying to reach you for six months. I climbed a fence. I came through a linen cupboard. I held a corridor with my hands tied." A pause. "A sore arm is not the thing that is going to move me out of this chair."

The contraction came again. Longer this time. I pressed my hands down and breathed. Jacob talked me through it without being asked.

"The light in that clearing," he said. "That specific twenty-minute window in the afternoon. The way you tilted your face up toward it with your eyes closed. Like you were deciding to let yourself have something good before going back to being careful."

The peak held.

He kept talking.

"I used to walk a longer route to avoid that clearing," he said. "Because if I went through it and you were there, I would have to keep walking and pretend I hadn't seen you. Pretending I hadn't seen you was the hardest thing I did every day for three years."

The peak broke.

I exhaled.

"You should have just stopped walking past it," I said.

"Yes," he said. "I should have."

Helen moved around the room, checking and preparing. She spoke in the low practical voice that had been a constant for several months.

"Next one will be the real push," she said. "Listen to exactly what I tell you. Don't anticipate. Just listen and respond."

"All right," I said.

"Jacob." Helen looked at him directly. "Hold her hand. Right hand. Don't let go."

He moved the chair closer. He put his right hand over mine. His grip was warm and steady.

"Don't break any of his fingers," I said.

"I'll try," he said.

The contraction came.

This one was entirely its own thing. Different from every contraction before it. I focused on Helen's voice, on Jacob's hand, on breathing the way I had been taught.

It was long. It was hard. It required everything I had, and some things I did not know I had until that exact moment.

Then Eli arrived.

Helen said the words she said. Then she placed him in my arms and he was warm and real. His eyes were closed. His hands were curled into small fists. He made a sound that was the first sound he had ever made in the world.

The room was very quiet in the moments after it.

"Hello," I said.

He turned his face toward my voice.

Jacob made a sound beside me. I looked at him. His face was doing something I had never seen before on anyone. Not emotion in a dramatic way. Just a person seeing something and not having any expression prepared for how large it was.

"Jacob," I said softly.

He looked up at me.

"Come here," I said. "He should know your voice."

He moved closer. He looked at Eli in my arms for a moment, then reached out with his right hand and put one finger into Eli's fist.

Eli gripped it immediately. Without opening his eyes. Without any hesitation.

Jacob did not move. He sat completely still with his finger in Eli's grip and looked at him for a long moment.

"Hello," Jacob said. His voice was very quiet.

Eli's grip tightened.

"Strong," Helen said from across the room. "He has been strong from the beginning."

"Yes," I said. "He has his own opinions about everything."

"He gets that from somewhere," Jacob said.

"From both of us, I think," I said.

He smiled. Not the careful version. The real one. The one I had only seen a few times in all the years I had known him.

"He's here," Jacob said. "He's actually here."

"Yes," I said.

He looked at Eli for a long, quiet moment. Then he looked at me.

"Thank you," he said.

"For what specifically?"

"For keeping him safe," he said. "Through all of it. Six months of all of it. You kept him safe."

"We kept him safe," I said. "Tonight especially."

He looked at his left arm briefly. "Tonight was a team effort."

"Your arm needs Helen," I said.

"Five more minutes."

Helen appeared beside him without being asked. "It cannot wait," she said. She examined the arm with quick, practiced hands. Her face was neutral in the way it was neutral when she was controlling a reaction.

"It's broken," she said.

"I know," Jacob said.

"You fought through a broken arm," I said.

"I fought with one arm," he said. "The other one was just along for the ride."

Helen looked at him the way she looked at people who said things she found medically unreasonable. "I need to set this properly."

"After I finish saying hello to my son," he said.

She stepped back. "Five minutes."

"Five minutes," he agreed.

I looked down at Eli in my arms. His eyes had opened slightly. Dark. Still unfocused the way all newborns were. Present. Completely, undeniably, and entirely present in the world.

"Eli," I said quietly.