Chapter Twenty Two
Delivery
My eyes blinked open and I stared at the ceiling blankly for a moment, as memories came flooding back. I’d gotten an infection and they’d treated it and that was about all I could remember.
I blinked again.
The ceiling was my ceiling! I was on the island! How was that possible?
Someone shifted beside me and then Asia’s smiling face came up into my field of vision, “Good morning sugar.”
I blinked again, “We’re on the island?” I asked, still not believing what my eyes were telling me.
She nodded.
“I don’t remember coming here!”
“You were sedated. I convinced the doctors that you’d heal up faster here, as opposed to being cooped up in a stuffy hospital.”
“Thank you!” I said overwhelmed with gratitude for her actions on my behalf.
“You’re welcome baby.” She said softly, as her fingers grasped my face, as she leaned in to kiss me passionately.
During the kiss two things became clear to me. One was how so very much I was grateful to have come through what I had and to be here with this woman I loved back on my island. The other was the startling realization that my beloved pressed up against me was as naked as I was, except for where I was covered in bandages.
Her lips drew away from mine and her eyes were full of smoky passion as she said, “I want to make a baby with you.”
I groaned, “Honey I’d love to, but I’m not quite up to that right now. Heck I don’t think I can even sit up!”
She smiled and the light in her eyes turned to that of a teasing glow, “What’s this? You refusing to have an intimate encounter with me?
Mindful of my broken leg she eased over more on to me and said teasingly, “And besides, who said you had to get up.”
“You are an unmitigated hedonistic little temptress!” I exclaimed, as she charmed me into the impossible.
Smiling seductively she said, “Oh you’re wrong about that honey. I’m just a wife that loves to appreciate her man, who I think is up for any challenge that I throw at him.”
She kissed me back passionately and it was a kiss that I returned with equal passion. She drew back smiling, but her smile changed, as she saw the tear coming down my face.
“I love you!” I said simply, at a lack for any better way of putting it. “You’ve changed everything with the gift of yourself to me. I love God for so many reasons, but the gift of you is one of the biggest. If it wasn’t for your sacrifice I’d still be in the dark and lost from the truth of how much God loves me!”
She had tears of her own now, “John, it stopped being a sacrifice a long time ago and instead I’ve come to see that you’re the greatest blessing I could’ve ever received in life.”
“Likewise.” I said
She hugged me then and my arms encircled her. I smiled after a moment, as I let my arms fall back to the bed to lay at my sides. She broke the kiss and looked into my eyes.
Smiling I said, “I’m at your mercy.”
“I know!” She said her words husky with promise.
Ten months later.
Asia looked around, in a free moment of peace not filled with contractions, at her husband’s handiwork. He done what he said he would and what a good job he’d done of it!
He’d turned the small hot spring pool into a veritable spa with underwater benches and interchanging shallow and deeper areas. He hadn’t stopped there. He had completely enclosed the space within a snug shelter.
It was humidly warm and balmy within the spa chamber, as Arctic winds raged away outside far below zero in temperature. Another series of contractions hit and she did her best to focus on relaxing and breathing through them.
Relaxing wasn’t actually that hard to do with John’s whispered encouragements directly into her ear, even as his big hands rubbed her soothingly over and over. He was the best birth partner a woman could ever dream of having.
Asia turned her face and sighed into his neck seeking comfort in the aftermath of a brutal contraction. Her water had broken four hours ago and since then the contractions had been merciless in their severity. She started to cry, as another one hit her.
“Shhhh, keep breathing honey. Here lay your head back on my shoulder and open up your throat for more air flow.” I said encouragingly.
Asia did as I said and it helped, but there was no rest from the contractions now, “I can’t do this!”
“Yes you can.”
“No I can’t!” Asia screamed back in pained defiance.
My voice remained calm as I said, “Any girl, who can save the world, can bring a baby into the world.”
“That was easy compared to this! Oh God!!!”
I pulled her head back from where she’d clenched it forward, “Breathe honey!” I commanded.
She did then in gasping breaths.
“Do you feel the urge to push yet?”
“No!” Asia whined out piteously, as I mopped the sweat from off her face.
“I want this baby out now! I want this over!”
“Shhhh, I know you do honey, but we’ve got to let your body tell us when to push or you could hurt yourself.”
Asia’s sobbed against my neck completely done in with this whole process of bringing new life into the world. Desperately I searched my mind for a way to distract her.
She’d quieted down some and I asked, “You know there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“What?” She responded, her tone decidedly ill-natured.
“Now that the Codes dead and gone, perhaps you could tell me what was the language that you used to scramble the Code with?”
“Cherokee.”
“Cherokee?” I repeated blankly.
After Asia was through another round of sharp contractions she responded, “Cherokee is still a spoken language today, but many don’t know that at one time there was a written language, with its own alphabet. The world has long since thought that the Cherokee alphabet had been lost, but I love learning new languages and I discovered a remnant of the alphabet on the black market. After this is all over I want to release that alphabet back to the Cherokee people.”
I shook my head in admiration of this amazing vibrantly intelligent woman that I had the privilege of calling my wife. She seized up again, “Ohhhhhh!”
She grabbed at my hands desperately and then met my eyes with a frantic need, “I need to push!”
I lifted her forward onto her hands and knees in the warm water, as she began to push in earnest. Throughout this whole ordeal the hardest thing for me had been to hide how scared I was, but now as I saw my baby’s head crowning everything changed.
This process had been happening for thousands of years and it was about to happen again tonight.
I got Asia’s attention after a push was over, “Do you want to stand?”
She nodded jerkily and I held her up securely from behind, as I let her hang limply in a squatting position in front of me. It was a back killing position for me to maintain, but any amount of discomfort was doable, if it helped her out in any way.
It really didn’t take long then. One moment she was intensely pushing and then she was catching our baby with her own hands. The baby, as soon, as it left the warm water began to scream bloody murder, as we both stared in slack-jawed wonder at the flawless creation in Asia’s hands.
“Oh John she’s a girl! She’s so beautiful! She’s absolutely perfect!” Asia exclaimed over and over, as all the pain she’d just been experiencing moments before was completely forgotten. All I could do was nod in rote answer, as I was beyond words. Asia brought our screaming little girl up to her chest, as I eased all of us back down into the water to sit on a bench.
“Oh baby girl its okay! Mama loves you! It’s alright!” Asia said soothingly to the little life in her arms. “Oh God thank you for our baby girl!”
The little girl quieted down some with the contact and smell of her mama’s skin and together we stared and felt at our perfect little creation of wonder.
“Are you hungry honey? Momma’s got lots of milk for you. Wanna try some? Oh that’s good isn’t it!”
Staring over Asia’s shoulder I couldn’t get over the bond that I already saw between mother and daughter, as they watched each other. The tiny articulate little fingers were just too much to resist and I reached a finger out. My heart stopped, as she grabbed a hold of my finger, with a surprisingly strong grip. Talk about a bond!
Asia’s face turned up to mine, her face was absolutely radiant, “Look what we made honey!”
We kissed then and little baby Elisha started squawking, sounding disgruntled at the lack of attention paid to her. Asia didn’t stop the kiss though, but ended it when it was time to, before turning back to her unhappy little girl.
“Daddy had mommy first. You’re just going to have to get used to that little Elisha.”
Elisha didn’t look convinced and we both chuckled at the look she was giving us. Idly, I let my fingers feel the still attached umbilical cord. The rubbery cord pulsed steadily between my fingers. When Asia and I had decided to have the birth on the island unassisted we had poured over everything we could find on how to have childbirth naturally.
One thing that had shocked me about modern medical practices was the absolute insistence on severing the umbilical cord immediately upon birth of the child, as if it was a crucial medical necessity. It was far from it actually. In fact it was one of the worst things you could ever do to a newborn baby.
Up to half of the baby’s blood supply could still be in the cord and placenta after delivery. Severing the cord immediately created a crisis within the baby to create new blood to replace that which was lost that need never have occurred. Cord blood wasn’t just any ordinary blood either. The loss of the beneficial properties in the cord blood could affect a child negatively into adulthood.
When the umbilical cord quit pulsing it was time to sever it and not before. It could take up to 40 minutes or more for it to stop pulsing during which time the baby was still getting oxygen and nutrition from the mother through the cord to help it recover from the stress of birth, not to mention the health benefit of having its full supply of blood to start out life on the outside with. It was also the best thing for the mother to leave the cord attached, as it helped the placenta to fully detach naturally, with less chance of hemorrhaging.
The reason many babies got jaundice, which some babies even died from, was due in large part to not having received their cord blood. Such a simple thing to do to ensure the health of a newborn baby and yet modern medical practice paid no attention to it or simply didn’t care enough about the baby’s welfare. This was one of those things about society that caused me to prefer living on my island separate from it.
The arrogance of belief that a group of educated somebodies knew better and had the right to dictate what should or should not happen with no concern to whatever the wishes or concerns of the individual, who was actually experiencing the event in personal perspective, was abhorrent to me. The medical field was just one of the institutions of mankind’s popular practices that eroded away at the freedom of an individual to make their own decisions.
It was that fundamental cancerous mentality to be found in all human societies that had helped lead to the rise of the first Tower of Babel and then later the Code’s virtual tower. The belief that a few should take over the thinking of many and decide for all the way things would be, based off of their own screwed up moral compasses justified by the excuse that the majority of society or at least those that mattered most to them would benefit and that the sacrifice of those who wouldn’t was acceptable. Such was the path by which freedoms are slowly lost, until the will, endowed upon humanity by their Creator to choose any decision at all over their own fate, is taken from them and they are enslaved to the desires of another.
Although a crisis had been averted in the world thanks to the courageous efforts and sacrifices of many, history often repeats itself. And one day a force already within the world would rise to enslave those hearts of man not already committed and sealed by their Creator, into an opposition of all things God, by virtue of being the opposite of God, the two being diametrically opposed.
Thankfully my spirit was sealed and my destiny sure, but the problem of that anti-force was yet to come, perhaps even within my children’s lifetime. Oh how I prayed not! But since the Earth was created and time had begun to be measured, time had been running out and sooner or later those things which must be would occur so that they might also be finished by the sovereignty of God.
Today however was not that time.
Today was a good day. I left off of my gloomy thoughts to focus on the miracle of life held snug and warm in my wife’s arms. Little Elisha sated with a full belly and toasty from the heat of the room and our bodies was fast asleep nuzzled against my wife’s chest. We had a real family now.
Asia looked up to me smiling, “Want to try for a boy next time?”
I laughed softly, “Don’t you think we should play around with our first one for a year or two before adding another one to the mix?”
She shrugged, “Yeah I guess, but it’s fun to plan ahead.”
“It’s a lot more fun to accomplish the plan though.”
Asia giggled and her eyes sparkled as she gazed into mine, “Do you remember when you almost raped me?”
“Quite vividly.”
“How everything’s changed since then to now!” Asia said marveling.
“To God be the glory for forever!” I said, before capturing her lips in another kiss, even as my sleeping daughter reclaimed one of my fingers with her tiny little hand. It was a good beginning to our family.