CHRYSALIS

It was an hour before dawn that Amy had the dream. She chased butterflies in
her childhood back yard; wispy ethereal forms under her clumsy fingers in the
overgrown summer grass. And, intent on her quarry, she saw that some had wings
smudged with newsprint, and others green as dollar bills, and more with the
names of college alma maters inscribed where there should be splashes of
color. Breathless and exhausted, she snatched at them, but they formed
themselves into a long line like migrating birds and slowly began to spiral
upwards out of her reach. And the few she managed to catch sighed sadly,
folded up their wings and crumbled in her hands until she could have been
holding dead fall leaves.

"Come back," she begged, "please! I tried so hard..."

But her words were swallowed up in the vacuum created by the column of
insects, ascending into the midday sun, blurring and fading until they were no
more than a flaw on her retina.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm sorry."

Sinking to her knees, she began to dig with her bare hands in the parched
earth until she uncovered the butterfly that had never hatched, and she cried
over the tissue-paper chrysalis covered in dust and cobwebs.

"Why are you crying?" asked a familiar voice.

"This is me," she answered.

"But look at what's inside..."

And as she watched, the cocoon slowly began to unfurl in a whisper of silk, a
flash of color, before she felt the pain, slicing through her abdomen like she
was splitting open in sympathy. Then she woke.

********************

For a minute Amy lay still, feeling the tears running sideways into her hair
and her ears. Then, slowly, as her eyes adjusted, she began to make out the
familiar outlines of her room once again, the shadows advancing and retreating
on the wall in the way the movement of the drapes cast them in the half-light.
But she suddenly felt very alone there, as if she were not just the only one
awake in the house, but on the whole earth. Amy shivered a little in the cool
air, bundling the sheets closer around her as she struggled to sit up. During
her first months, she'd often slid quietly out of bed and gone downstairs when
she woke early, there making herself a hot drink and copying up notes to
occupy her mind, or just wandering up and down, trying to quell a restlessness
that she couldn't put into words.

She'd worked up until Murdock and her doctor between them had been forced to
practically barricade her indoors to make her rest,  only winning their half
of the battle when Amy compromised and agreed to let Tawnia work at the house
after office hours while she just typed reports for her friend. Now she got
tired too quickly to either walk or work for very long. 

Next month would be her thirtieth birthday. By the time her sister Laura was
Amy's age, she had been an up and coming young attorney. What was Amy going to
be? A dime a dozen reporter with a baby in tow. She placed her hands on the
mound of her belly as she'd done every morning upon waking for almost nine
months, and closed her eyes. She felt sick to her stomach this morning as she
hadn't done since the early stages of her pregnancy.

"Little Murdock," she murmured, "go easy on your mommy, huh? Remember we're
both amateurs here."

Amy half-waited for the answering kick she'd grown used to whenever she
touched or talked to the baby, but it didn't come. It disappointed her a
little, but didn't surprise her. Her doctor had told her the movements
lessened as the baby grew nearer it's birth. What did surprise her was when
the pain came again, making her inhale sharply as her insides knotted like a
menstrual cramp. 

She fought to deliberately smooth the edge of panic. *Okay, Amy, just relax.
This doesn't mean anything so far. Could be a muscle pain; could be - what did
they call them at the class? - Braxton-Hicks.*

She refused to even let the word even enter her mind at the moment:
contractions. Trying to keep her breathing calm and steady, calm and steady,
Amy eased slowly over to the nightstand and located her watch; settled back
against the pillow holding it in one hand and her swollen belly in the other.
She found herself absently timing the stupidest things. Someone honked that
car horn down the street every one minute and twenty seconds...Murdock, buried
in the sheets at her side, snuffled gently in his sleep like a dreaming puppy
every eight seconds... But still a small tense part of her brain was keeping
it’s track on timing out how often the pain squeezed her. Once every five
minutes.  

*Oh, please, God,* she thought, *not yet. I'm not ready. There's things I have
to do before I can do this...*

For nine months the baby had been another part of her body. Now it was very
soon going to be a separate person. A person dependent on her for the best
part of the next twenty years. Amy felt guilty at the sudden sense of
despondency that brought her. A baby should have been the finishing tape. It
should have been the gold medal waiting for the winner, not weighing her down
before she'd barely gotten off of the starting line.

In a small corner of her memory, a twelve year old girl in San Diego left her
bicycle in the driveway and ran up the front steps into the house, slamming
the screen door behind her. Her eyes were bright with the look of satisfaction
that came from the Memorial Day project they had all been working on. She'd
stood up in front of the class and read her tribute to what Memorial Day meant
to America, the men who had died for their country, and the men who were still
dying every evening on the TV screen, fighting guerrillas in Vietnam, and the
guy across the street who'd gone there and come back and spent nights sitting
out in his back yard looking at nothing because he couldn't sleep. The teacher
had given her a sound 'A'.

And inside, her father told her, "Laura called this afternoon from college.
She was just elected President of her Sorority house. Isn't that terrific?
It's going to do as much for her in the future as her grades!" He looked so
proud and happy as he smiled at her. "So what did you do in school today,
sweetheart?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again. "Nothing much." Turning to the door,
she glanced over her shoulder. "I'll be in my room...I have a lot of homework
to do before dinner."

On another Memorial weekend years later, Amy stood with her family at the
cemetery and watched her father buried, with the sad, puzzled feeling that so
many things had been left unsaid. With no prior illness that anyone had been
aware of, he had arrived at his office one morning, sat down at his desk, and
suffered a coronary fifteen minutes later. By the time the ambulance arrived,
it was already too late. It was two weeks before Amy's graduation. He had
never lived to show his happiness as she stepped through the door from
childhood. 

By 6AM, the contractions were coming every four minutes, and Amy was sweating
and sick with the pain. She reached over and shook her partner's arm. Murdock
looked younger when he slept, more innocent. It always made her feel as if his
dreams should never be filled with anything except pirates and crocodiles and
spaceships and Captain Marvel. She wondered if maybe people were younger when
they were asleep, if your brain didn't dream peacefully of all those things
until the world tramped over it with dirty feet and turned the pirates into
Viet Cong and the spaceships into Huey choppers, and Captain Marvel lay in the
ditch choking on his own blood. 

Murdock had spent years recruiting and training a new army against the one
that had been disguised and warped until he no longer recognized it. The
personalities he dived for cover behind had become his comfort, his fortress;
his protection when his three dearest friends in the world could not be there
for him. Being in the VA had granted him the freedom to build that fortress
until it reached the sky and was made of stone. 

The roots that she and Murdock's friendship had put down outside the walls
were tentative at first. But they grew, rambling upwards and clasping hands in
front and back until they began to penetrate the stone. The chinks of light
the leaves let through were frightening at first; the sudden glare of the
morning lamp in winter that made you beg for the shadows. But enough to make
him think again, make him wonder if there was not only a world out there, but
a part of it that might belong to him. As he reached towards Amy for the first
living object in his new world, she had gravitated with equal warmth to him;
the honesty and simplicity that lifted her spirits, let her exhausted river
slip round quiet islands in his presence and rest awhile. He didn't ask for
anything more than a smile and an hour of conversation here and there. By the
time that he admitted - with a scribbled message on a gum wrapper on
Valentine's Day! - that his feelings for her ran deeper than friendship, it
didn't come as more than a momentary shock. They had eased into each other so
quickly and naturally that she could hardly contemplate any kind of future
without him. 

"Murdock?" she said, "HM - wake up." She called him both names on a regular
basis. 

He rolled over onto his back and searched for her hand without opening his
eyes. "Awake already."

"I mean on your feet awake." Amy tried to keep her voice calm and level, but
it trailed off and degenerated into a gasp as the next contraction scrunched
her belly in it's giant fist.  "I think we should get to the hospital soon."

Murdock shot up in bed, startled into alertness. He was the only person she'd
ever watched sleep who could snap in and out of consciousness so fast. Maybe
because his body was still responding to it's training as a soldier. The
nights in the jungle. Even in sleep, listening...

"You in labor?" 

"I didn't want to wake you until I was sure. I thought it might be a false
alarm."

He studied her expression, taking in the taut look of her features in seconds
with intense dark eyes. "Well, I say it looks like we're gonna have a baby!
How often you having pains?"

"Four minutes...for the last hour."

"Damn, I wish you wouldn't try to be brave." Murdock slid out of bed, pressing
the heels of his hands over his eyes momentarily against the light before
rummaging for his clothes amongst the pile on the chair. "I said I was gonna
look after you. How am I supposed to look after you if you fight the whole
time?"

"I'm a fighter," Amy said through gritted teeth. "And it's me who's supposed
to look after you. I don't want - " She was about to say she didn't want the
baby, but she knew that wasn't true. It wasn't the baby. It was what it stood
for. The bedroom felt claustrophobic, years of disappointment taking up air.
"I don't want you to be *responsible* for me. I just want you to be...close."

Balancing on one foot, then the other, he pulled on his pants, and leaned over
the bed, cupping her face in his hands and covering her mouth with his in a
warm kiss. "Baby, you already took on one kid when I moved in. You need all
the help you can get."

Amy gave a weak smile that turned into a grimace.

Murdock drew back. "Another?"

She managed to nod her head. "Oh my God, it hurts!"

He grabbed a T-shirt. "I'm calling the hospital! Don't start without me,
okay?"

"That's not funny, HM."

"I know...but I'm the only one who can say things like that to you and get
away with it!" She let him give her another kiss before he disappeared through
the door.

The pain was starting to bear down into Amy's lower back, and she inched up
from her sitting position. She tried to remember what methods they had
discussed in class for managing early labor, but everything that she'd
listened to and carefully noted seemed to have splintered into fragments of
textbook logic that had nothing to do with what she was feeling right now. She
wasn't a diagram. She was real and breathing and aching, and somehow she had
to get through this. Eventually, from a combination of memory and instinct,
she managed to take some sort of action. Feeling about as agile as a small
rhinoceros, she got onto her hands and knees, taking the pressure off of her
spine, and steadied herself like that whenever a contraction came. It helped,
a little.


Murdock came back upstairs while she was resting between pains, carrying a
glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.

"Here - drink some of this if you don't want to eat right now."

Amy turned her head away as he held out the glass, the sharp pungent smell
making her stomach churn. "I don't want any."

"Honey, you were sick all day yesterday. You don't drink, you're gonna get
dehydrated and blow away like a tumbleweed! Come on, Amy, just a little. Just
for me, huh? Pretty please?"

She took the juice, sipped it, and pulled a face.

"A little more?"

"Quit bugging me, and I'll drink it," Amy said, and felt guilt-ridden as
Murdock immediately backed off. It was like she'd just kicked a puppy that
licked her hand.

"I'm sorry. Listen, I, uh, I called Labor and Delivery and told 'em you were
having pains at four minutes, and the gal on the phone said it sounded to her
like we're gonna be holding a baby by this evening, and we can come in soon as
we like -"

She interrupted. "What about the doctor?"

"Well, I called, and it turns out Sheridan is on shift at the hospital *now*,
so they're gonna buzz him and he'll meet us there." He squatted down beside
the bed, looking up into her face. "Amy, don't be scared. Everything'll be
okay, and soon we're gonna have a little tiny baby all of our own!" 

"I just want this little tiny baby *outside* of me, that's all!" Amy paused,
closing her eyes for a moment. "Murdock...I'm sorry. I'm acting crappy and I'm
acting dumb. This happens every day, right, to lots of different people all
over the world?"

Murdock smiled as he rose, giving her hand a squeeze in his large one. "Yeah.
But it doesn't happen to us every day."

She watched the comfortable roll of his shoulders as he left the room again,
feeling an intense pool of self-loathing well up inside. *Damn!* She didn't
have to take this out on Murdock, the most fundamentally good man she had ever
met in her life, a man who could no more have hurt a living soul than cut off
his right hand. He had no way of seeing the things screwed up tight inside
her; how much he guessed, she didn't know. Nothing of what she was wrestling
with right now, both physically and emotionally, was his fault.  It took two
to make a baby. If she was tied down now, she'd forged the chain herself.
Sometimes she wondered how he put up with her.

*You don't deserve him!* she thought angrily, brushing at her eyes that were
suddenly overspilling tears again. 

Swilling the juice around, Amy stared into her glass. She remembered every
detail, every day of their relationship, the threads of their lives slowly
weaving together. Fate. It had to be Fate, or karma, or something. The pilot
in a psychiatric ward and the girl reporter? What were the chances of those
threads intertwining? They were of different color and substance, but they'd
spun out together until the tapestry was seamless. 

She didn't know when she'd first fallen in love with Murdock in some secret
place in her heart. It had taken his confession to make her realize that she
had, but it had felt so right, she knew it must have been a long time back. It
was three years ago now since she had stood with him at the VA and let the
sweet clean February rain baptize their first kiss. There was a distinct sound
at their connection, a good, strong truth, and Amy knew he had felt it.
Murdock had always been strong; he had shown that in his devotion to his team-
mates. Now he claimed some of that strength to use for himself. 

It was a lost and apprehensive HM Murdock that she and Face had collected at
the hospital entrance for the last time one day in late fall carrying a
holdall under one arm and a boxful of movie magazines and video tapes under
the other, a Murdock who with the sudden severing of his umbilical cord
suddenly seemed much younger than either of them. They went to lunch at one of
the best restaurants, enjoying the meal all the more for the glances they drew
at Murdock and Amy not being dressed for it. Face pretended to complain, but
it was obvious that he was really too wrapped up in making sure his friend
enjoyed his first day of real freedom. Murdock joked that he was finally
getting an address that was respectable to write to the President from. He was
cheerful throughout the meal and drinks, but there was a strain around his
eyes, and he looked a little disappointed, but relieved, when the afternoon
turned to evening and he and Amy drove out to Santa Monica. Officially,
Murdock was staying with her until he found an apartment of his own;
unofficially, neither she or any of the guys thought that he would ever leave.
And he hadn't. 

They didn't sleep together that first night, nor for several nights
afterwards. Kissing was one thing; changing the status of their relationship
irrevocably from friends to lovers was another. But when they finally lay
together in early evening watching the last rays of sun glow on Amy's bedroom
wall, bone-weary with their first taste of real intimacy, it wasn't so hard to
adjust to. 

The following Summer, on a spur of the moment decision, they spent a weekend's
vacation in the Mendocino Forest in NorthWest California. They camped in the
trees miles off the central routes, hiked beneath a sky you could almost
touch, left the tent flaps open at night and made love looking up at the
stars. The one thing Amy had forgotten to pack was her diaphragm. While they
were sated and laying on their backs side by side in that special drowsy place
gazing up at the velvet blanket of darkness, Murdock started explaining to her
what the aeronautics of a spaceship would be. She wasn't sure whether he was
talking nonsense or whether she was just too sleepy to concentrate, but she
kept laughing because she couldn't understand a word of it. It sounded
wonderful, though. A universe of infinite possibilities. Later she thought
that it was strange that while they had been discussing life on other planets,
a whole new life was coming into being inside of her. 

Nausea rose in Amy's stomach again, obliterating the memory. She forced
herself to hold it through the next contraction, after it was over clambering
out of bed and making for the bathroom. Five minutes later she was down on her
knees, retching miserably over the toilet bowl. While she was still sitting
there blowing her nose and shivering, she felt Murdock's gentle but firm hands
on her shoulders.

"Hey, muchacha, come on. We're going to the hospital *now*. No 'buts', okay?" 

Santa Monica Hospital was less than twenty-five minutes from the house, but it
seemed like the longest journey Amy had ever made in her life when it was in
Murdock's beat-up station wagon - her own car being in shop - with every fiber
of her body tensed against the next contraction. There were seven on the way.
They hit every red light they came to. Even Murdock was swearing under his
breath; he usually maintained a code about language in front of women. And at
the hospital there was paperwork waiting. She tried to do her breathing
exercises between questions and the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.
By the time that Amy was admitted to her room in Labor & Delivery and changed
into a hospital gown, she felt as if she was losing the capacity for rational
thought. A nurse gave her an examination. (Where was her doctor? wasn't he
supposed to be here?) When she heard the girl say that she was only two
centimeters dilated, her heart sank. Oh, God - how much longer was this going
to last? It barely registered when they took her blood pressure and set up an
IV drip. A few minutes later it filtered through that Murdock had said
something about her not keeping down any fluids. 

Her partner was holding her hand on the tube-free side. What was he talking
about now? Focal points? He wasn't really making any sense. She saw Murdock
get out of her hospital bag the pink plush rabbit he had given her last
Valentine's Day and place it on the end of the bed.

"HM? What did you bring Wuffy for?"

"He's your focal point. You just keep your eyes on him and it helps you
concentrate on your breathin'. Think of him as..uh...a lucky mascot."

She stared into the rabbit's glassy fixed eyes, at the padded heart he
clutched between his paws with the slogan, 'Some-bunny loves you'. He looked
dusty and tired and domestic.  "Wuffy is *not* helping."

Laying down was making her feel sick again, even though she was sure she must
have thrown up everything that had passed through her system for a year. "I
want to get up," she said to the nurse. "If this baby won't come out on it's
own, I'll walk it out!"

"Just as far as the corridor, okay? We want you on the monitor for twenty
minutes every hour." The girl gave her a smile. She was around Amy's age. "If
anything happens, yell for me. I'm Corinne."

They walked up and down the corridor and in and out of the delivery room,
Murdock pulling Amy's IV stand. The contractions would get harder and more
frequent when she walked - which although it hurt more, seemed like a good
sign - but when she went back to bed to have the fetal monitor belt strapped
around her belly, they would slow up again. Amy's spine ached so bad that
sometimes the only way that she could stand it was by leaning into Murdock's
chest during a contraction while he massaged the small of her back as hard as
he could. 

"Murdock, I don't want to do this any more - I want to go home!"

"Hey! What are you talking about? I never saw anythin' Amy Allen couldn't do
when she set her mind on it!" His tone was light, but he gave her shoulders a
hard squeeze as they began to move slowly again, as if trying to press the
conviction into her. "First time you walked through the door at the VA, I said
to myself 'Now here is somebody very special'."

"Yeah, right," Amy answered. So special that she was still working her butt
off at twenty-nine trying to get her boss to throw her a few crumbs of praise
and say that in a few months he'd be thinking about moving her on, the same
thing he'd said a few months before...and a few months before that. She
suddenly felt very tired, a heaviness caused by more than labor. If she wasn't
careful, there wouldn't be any fight left in her at all. 

She'd take the three months off with the baby, max. Then get it into that good
daycare she'd registered with. Elaine had used the place for her son before he
started kindergarten. Eldridge would see that being a mother wasn't going to
affect the hours she could put into her job one little bit. Larry Kemp had
just taken a position in New York; she'd see if she could get at least a trial
run with his weekly column. There were a lot of readers leafed through to that
after a glance at the front page, and she'd get her name right up top, even if
it was in small type. And everyone would be so proud...

One night when she was fourteen, Amy had stayed up until 2AM studying for Math
the next day. She only realized that she'd fallen asleep, resting her head on
her arms at the desk, when she drifted back to the sound of her mother's voice
and the lingering scent of her hair, like faded flowers. 

"Honey, I got up for the bathroom and saw your light still on. Come on, you
have school tomorrow -" Gentle hands lifting her from the chair, switching off
the lamp and tidying books in one fluid motion.

"Mom, I have a test...I need to study..."

"What you need is some rest! All the studying in the world isn't going to help
you if you're falling asleep on your feet."

"But I got a B minus last time. That's nearly a flunk!" She paused, seeing,
rather than hearing her mother's sigh. "Okay, so it's not a flunk. But I know
I can do better!" 

Amy knew how well she ought to be doing. The Summer before, when Laura was
home, she'd pushed her food around on her plate at dinner, listening, with her
eyes on the table, as her sister shared her tales of college life. Their
father quipped that Laura was going to be too successful for any man to look
at her. It was a joke; they all knew that Laura had been going with her
boyfriend for two years. But it seemed to Amy that her father wanted to make
one hundred percent sure that his eldest daughter was going to be commanding
her own future before she started reserving any of it for Jeff.

Amy was jolted back to the present by another hard contraction, and this time
a distinct feeling of warmth trickling down her inner thigh. Murdock grabbed
her arm, seeing her expression as she halted in mid-step.

"What happened?" 

"I think my water broke -" 

Thank God, they'd stopped right back outside her room! And thank God, there
was Corinne, who must have been right near the door at the time she'd said
'water'. Nobody could call the nurse a great beauty, but she looked like an
angel at that moment in time. For the first time since she'd arrived, Amy was
thankful to get back on the bed. The contractions that had been painful before
were unbearable now. She was gripping the edge of the bed so hard her knuckles
were turning white. Another undignified examination with her knees lifted and
the gown rucked up around her belly. A doctor had appeared from somewhere -
not Sheridan, must be a resident. Somewhere in a strange, detached portion of
her mind, she contemplated the view she was giving complete strangers. 


The doctor confirmed that her water had broken. And that she was at four
centimeters. Four? Delivery wasn't until ten! She asked about an epidural, and
they gave her a green light, but it could still be an hour before there was an
anesthetist free. First babies always like to come in rush hour, Corinne said
jokingly; when she had her fourth and could do this in her sleep, the whole
hospital would be on call for her.  Amy's breathing exercises didn't seem to
be helping at all.  Murdock tried to encourage her, but she just snapped at
him that he wasn't the one having the baby and didn't know what he was talking
about, then abruptly burst into tears. She had the sensation of being divided
in two, simultaneously observer and participant of the scene. One part of her
was trying to comprehend why all of these stupid people around her weren't
helping her do the one thing she wanted to do, get this baby out; while the
other was watching in amazement as an insane woman yelled at the man she loved
more than anyone else in the world. Amy Allen didn't yell at people. She was
always cool, strong, in control.  

"I'm sorry," she said. She kept saying it over and over again. 

Murdock smoothed back a few damp strands of hair that were straggling over her
forehead. "Forget it! You just worry about the baby, okay? You're doing
great!" He gave her one of his warm smiles. "You always been one heck of a
team member," he said against her ear, "and you make one heck of a mom too."

There was a lot of reassurance in his words, but one of them seemed to nag at
Amy, spoiling the warm sentence. She went over each word in her head, trying
to find the guilty one. After a while, she realized it was 'mom'.

"Murdock?" she asked.

"What?"

"Promise me something? Promise me that having the baby won't change anything?"
That it won't stop me having what I want. That I won't spend my days meeting
girlfriends for coffee and talking about diapers and colic and stretch marks.

He looked faintly puzzled, but kissed the inside of her wrist. "I promise."

On the third finger of Amy's left hand, her little sapphire ring glinted under
the strip lights of the delivery room. It was sweaty against her skin, but she
didn't intend to take it off until she had to. Blue, the color of the sky that
Murdock loved. He had given it to her when they found out about the baby, an
engagement ring if she wanted it to be one. And she'd said no, not because she
didn't want to be married to him, but because she didn't want the thought of
being married at all. As long as there wasn't that piece of paper, she could
say, 'I can take care of myself.' Marrying Murdock would be like admitting she
depended on him, and how much she'd come to depend on him already sometimes
scared her. So they decided to call it a commitment ring.

"If it's not an engagement ring, I guess I have no right to wear it on that
finger," she'd admitted.

Murdock shrugged. "Who cares? Wear it anyway." So she did. 

The doctor kept going in and out of the room - he was dealing with three other
expectant mothers too - but before he left the next time, he gave Amy a shot
of morphine to help her bear up until the epidural arrived. The pain from the
contractions didn't go away entirely, but it did lose it's edge. It also gave
her a stoned, sick feeling that she didn't like one little bit. She had to
roll onto her left side and press her head into the pillow to stop the top of
it floating off, and just shiver and sweat, shiver and sweat. Corinne said
being on the left side helped the labor along too. Great. Amy didn't really
care. Something, anything, to take her mind off of all this. Murdock gave her
another back rub. She remembered the game they used to play during her sixth
and seventh months, on nights when the baby kicked so vigorously that she
couldn't sleep. Murdock would wake up too and come and snuggle next to her
with his fingers intertwined with hers on the curve of her belly, and they
would talk to the baby and make up a code to translate it's responses. A
single kick meant 'no', two kicks meant 'yes' and three or more 'maybe', 'I
don't know', or 'it's a secret'. She wouldn't have minded playing another of
those games right now.

"Are you a boy or a girl?" 

(two kicks)

"Uh, yeah, lemme be more specific. I did kinda think we had one or the other
in there, not a little kitty-cat!"

(laughter from Amy)

"So are you a boy?"

(four kicks, almost one after the other)

"A girl?"

"Owch!! HM, it looks like that's restricted!"

He prodded Amy's bulge. "Cadet, can you hear me? This is your father, Captain
HM Murdock addressing you! It is absolutely against military law to withhold
information from your commanding officer! I order you to reveal your sex
and/or gender under threat of court martial and sentence of the severest
kind."

"And what would that be?" asked Amy.

"Having to wear clothes bought in pink and blue stripes." 

There were some voices at the door. Corinne leaned over the bed. "The
anesthetist's here. We need you to sit up - can you manage?"

"I think so." The epidural! Thank God! The thought that in a few minutes all
of these aches and cramps were going to fade into blissful oblivion was the
only thing that could have given Amy the energy to move. Corinne helped her
into what seemed like an impossible position; bending over a pillow with her
giant belly. First came a shot of Novocain, and she took that, but the
contractions intensified again sitting up, and as hard as she tried, Amy
couldn't keep still long enough through them for the epidural needle to go in
place. The anesthetist grouched at her for holding things up (what the hell
was *he* complaining about? She was the one waiting to get rid of this pain!)
but she couldn't hold any kind of position for more than two seconds until
Murdock sat down on the bed in front of her. 

"Come on - gimme a big bear hug, now," he said, and kept her still against his
own body while the thin, clean sting of the needle went in. He was a very good
hugger. Some people held you stiff like a piece of china they thought might
break, or with fingers that constantly crawled around in and out of your hair
and clothes like a dozen spiders. Murdock just kind of scooped you up into his
arms like a stuffed animal and didn't worry too much if a finger or an elbow
got squashed here and there. It was such a safe, comforting feeling that Amy
closed her eyes. She wished she could stay like that forever, just resting her
face against his shoulder and inhaling his musky warm scent; letting the world
go to hell around them if it liked. 

Of course, she wasn't going to get that luxury. The anesthetist, whom she was
beginning to rank right up there with Satan and Hitler, wanted Amy back on her
side again while he gave her a test dose for toxic reactions. She stared at a
chart on the wall and tried to remember what it was like not to hurt. After
what seemed like hours, the first proper shot of drugs went in. 

For fifteen minutes, Amy was in heaven. She was still dimly aware of the
tightening sensation in her abdomen with each contraction, like being gently
squeezed from inside, but there was no pain whatsoever. She just lay there and
basked in the beautiful feeling of numbness from just beneath her ribcage
right down to her toes. She went from a monster to being *human* again; she
could ask questions, watch the monitor, talk to Murdock. She even thought of
asking for the phone so that she could call some friends. *Hey, Tawnia. I'm
just fine; you? Actually, I'm in labor right now...* What in the world had she
been whining about? This wasn't going to be hard at all! 

Fifteen minutes was all it lasted. Then the pains started kicking in again.
They called back the anesthetist, who gave her a repeat shot, but this time
the only place Amy stayed insensible was down her right hand side, and there
was no relief at all. Another nurse came in, and she and Corinne tried turning
her to get the epidural to work on the other side as well, but for whatever
reason, the drugs weren't taking. A doctor came into the room, and it was her
own doctor, Tom Sheridan, this time, but she was too miserable to even be glad
to see him.

Sheridan was only in his late thirties, and he had the kind of enthusiasm that
would keep him young a long time after that. He genuinely enjoyed his work,
which made a lot of difference to his patients. He greeted Amy and Murdock
with his usual brisk mixture of cheerfulness and calm. Nothing to worry about
here. We're going to have a baby in no time at all. But after a study of the
fetal monitor, he had stopped looking quite so cheerful, and was having a few
quiet words with the nurses instead. Amy watched him, shivering, from within
the stone wall confine of her bed and tubes, feeling the weight of the eternal
uncertainty expand within her. She thought that she was coming to realize, for
the first time, that that was the torture - not the pain, but the
helplessness. She wanted to get something moving, anything. Give her a pain
she could fight against and come out screaming and alive. 

Murdock got up from his chair beside the bed. He looked worn out. Amy wished
she'd told him to go and get something to eat rather than sit here when there
was nothing he could do. His wide dark eyes looked enormous.

"Hey, doc," he demanded, "anything going on here you ought to tell us?
Something the parents of this little guy in here might like to know?"

Sheridan turned back to them quickly, his lips pursed. "I'm a little worried,"
he said, then immediately looked distressed, as if he'd forgotten some rule of
obstetrics that stated in block letters, 'Never Tell The Parents You Are
Worried.' "Well, not worried. Let's say *bothered*. I've been watching the
contractions, and the baby's heart rate dips during each one and doesn't pick
up again until just before the next one begins." 

"Why?" asked Amy, a new worm of panic rousing her from apathy.

"I'm making a good guess that it's the epidural drug in this case. You might
love it, but the baby doesn't always agree. Whatever the cause...I think it's
best if we get him or her out as soon as possible."

Corinne did another examination. "Five centimeters here."

Sheridan looked back from the nurse to Amy and Murdock. "I'd like to do a
cesarean section." 

The operating room was cold; Amy was naked in front of a half dozen strangers.
The doctor went over what would be happening with her while they prepared her
for surgery, but her concentration kept shifting, her gaze flitting from one
masked figure to another, trying to pick out Murdock amongst them. She saw him
as soon as they let him through the swing doors, a head taller than anyone
else in the room except Sheridan. 

"HM!" She tried to sit up on the operating table and failed.

He was beside her in a moment. "S'okay, babe - I'm here." 

He looked so bizarre in his set of scrubs that at any other time, Amy would
have laughed out loud. As it was, she just sent up a silent prayer of
gratitude that the hospital staff were still allowing him to be present at the
baby's birth. 

"Did you call Mom?"

"Yeah. I told her that the docs had it wrong for nine months and we just found
out ten minutes ago it's triplets."

"HM, *please* tell me you didn't say that to my mother?!"

"Course I didn't. You think I'm crazy or somethin'?" Murdock flashed her a
brief grin. "I told her to haul it up here if she wants to see her first
grandchild, 'cause the tiniest member of the A-Team's on it's way, ready or
not!"

"Okay, kids," Sheridan said, "no more talking, now. We're ready to go."

Murdock leaned down and gave Amy a quick kiss before replacing his mask. "Love
you," he said against her temple, "and I love the baby already."

"Yeah," she answered tiredly, "me too." How awful, she thought, that something
could be stronger than love.

The anesthetist gently lifted Amy's chin, and fitted the mask over her nose
and mouth, forcing down sick-sweet sleep. 

********************

********************

When Amy opened her eyes, she thought that she had died. She felt herself
encased in narrow darkness from top to bottom with only just enough space to
move her feet and her hands. The air she breathed seemed musty and dank, as if
she had been laying here a long, long time and everything around had grown old
and stale. A great sadness washed over her. *I died and they buried me, and I
never even got to see the baby.* She wished she could have just had a few
minutes to say goodbye.

Drifting, she wondered how long she'd been dead. She guessed it had been
years, because it seemed to be quite comfortable here now, her dusty bed
molded to her form. Actually, it didn't feel like she'd always expected a
coffin to feel at all. It felt like paper...no, like leaves, like there'd been
life in it at one time. Amy stretched the muscles of her arms and her calves
and felt the pull of the walls on her skin where it was attached, the
constriction of blood vessels under the surface. Like it had once been a part
of her. But no more.

She started to explore with her eyes. It wasn't as dark as she had first
thought; there was a place just to the right of her head which seemed thinner,
where if she squinted she could see daylight. It roused a deep yearning within
her, drowned just as quickly by unease. 

*I don't know what's outside. I don't want to go out there on my own.*

"You won't be alone."

Amy knew that voice. It was a part of her, the part that had underlined and
given purpose to every move she'd ever made, every path she'd ever chosen. 

"Dad?" she said, "I thought you died...twelve years ago."

He laughed. "Gone but not forgotten." And then he was there in her mind's eye,
her father. Not the man she'd stood and watched words said over at the
cemetery, but her father as he had been in his prime; tall, handsome, the dark
hair that he had given to both of his daughters flecked with a few strands of
silvery-gray over the ears that gave him a distinguished air. One weekend when
Amy was three or four years old, he had let she and Laura come to his office
building with him while he stopped by to pick up some keys. He had an office
all to himself with the biggest chair that Amy had ever sat in, and a view
from the window that stretched right over the bay. For years afterwards, she'd
pictured her father as a kind of general commanding his army from that chair. 

"I'm sorry. For dying before I got anything done. I didn't mean to." 

"Oh, you haven't died. You won't be dying for a long time yet!"

"Then where am I?"

"This place is inside you, inside your own mind. Feel it. It's part of you;
you've spent a long time building it. Too long. You can't stay here forever.
Do you know what this is? It's the twenty-five years a little girl spent
working to make everyone happy. Everyone except the one person who really
mattered. Yourself. But you aren't a little girl anymore. And you have to live
your own life, not the life you thought everyone wanted you to live."

"Why are you telling me this now? Why did you have to die? If you hadn't died
- I could have felt your pride in me in other ways." Tears pricked the backs
of Amy's eyelids, and she fought against them. "I wanted to make you proud of
me! Laura was always the best at everything, the best grades, the best
college, the best job. I wanted to look in your eyes and see the same thing
that she saw!"

"Amy, I *am* proud of you. The only thing I ever wanted for both my girls was
to see them happy. Laura loved her books in school. She's never happier than
when she's standing in the courtroom now. She loves her work. She's a success
at it because it's what *Laura* wants; she's not trying to please anyone else.
And the times that you're happiest is when you're not having to fight, when
you're putting everything you've got into being yourself." Her father's voice
was gentler than she ever remembered it as being. "Think of a time in the last
year, a time when you were truly happy."

Through the same gap that had shown her the light, Amy could hear the
powerful, far-away sound of wind rushing through trees. She saw their shapes
silhouetted against a dark velvety sky studded with diamond stars, and there
was no fear of the darkness, only wild, joyful freedom gripping her heart. She
lay there looking up at the stars and her spirit soared with the pleasure
surrounding her aching body...

"It's the camp site!" she said, wonderingly. "The forest where we went on
vacation. The night I got pregnant -" She was crying in earnest now with the
sweetness of the memories. "I wished I could stay there for ever!"

"Would you like to go back there now? This time to stay?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Then put your hand out and take a hold of it. It's still waiting for you.
It's been waiting for you your whole life."

The cocoon surrounding her had grown almost transparent. Slowly, stiffly, like
an paralyzed person learning to move again, Amy lifted her hands and pushed at
it, feeling tiny fibers and membranes rip as her flesh came free. A chunk
crumbled and fell away. She clawed at the rest, but she was almost exhausted.
She'd never do this on her own...

"Amy, you're not alone anymore! I'm here!"

"HM!" She reached out again, and this time warm, strong, fingers caught hold
of hers. "Help me?" she begged, and felt, above her, the coating being torn
into and ripped away, until arms encircled her waist, and lifted her, swaying
and blinking, into the quiet light of the stars. Murdock kissed her.

"I love you," he said.

Amy's strength came back to her in a glorious rush that she'd never felt
before, and she hugged him so hard she almost knocked the breath out of him.
"I love you too! I love you and I need you!"

A smile spread over Murdock's face, the beautiful, brilliant smile of his that
transformed his very ordinary features and made them striking. "You think that
maybe I can make you happy?"

*Can he?* she asked, the hope faint and trembling, like the heart of a chick,
too weak as yet to take the strain of thinking too much.

*His love has set you free. Just like yours set him free.*

"Yes. Now that I'm not scared of it any more."

His smile got even wider. Then he reached inside his jacket and brought out a
sheaf of papers; school essays, diplomas, newspapers. They went over them
together. Then they took their time shredding them into pieces and letting
them blow away in the wind. 

********************

When Amy woke, it was with perceptions as clear as morning. Her head was
filled with fog and cotton wool from the remainder of the anesthetic, and
there was a deep line of pain across her lower belly, but she was filled with
an enormous sense of peace. She lay for a few seconds hardly daring to
breathe, in case it was suddenly shattered. When her fears didn't surface, she
dared to let out a sigh.

She felt a very gentle squeeze of her fingers.

"Hey, you're back in the land of the living, little momma. How're you
feeling?"

Amy gave him a sleepy smile in return. "Good...I feel good." He looked as
wonderful as her dream-Murdock. "Do we have a baby?"

"We sure do! Seven pounds and one ounce of little girl!"

"Is she alright?" 

"She's perfect, she's gorgeous, she's already thrown up on me once, and I can
go fetch her from the nursery now you're awake. Would you like that?"

"Mmm." Amy held his hand for a moment. "Murdock? Thankyou."

"What for?"

"Everything."

She watched the sun brightening and fading along the walls as she waited,
gentler than it's sharp morning sister, fading the room to monochrome. Noises
filtered down the corridor outside, but they didn't jangle her nerves. For the
first time in months, Amy felt completely at peace. 

Murdock came in, accompanied by a nurse. In his arms, so carefully, as if he
thought he might break it, he carried a bundle of blankets so small it seemed
impossible there could be a living, breathing human being inside there. The
nurse pulled out the chair for him beside the bed, and he lowered himself down
and maneuvered the bundle into Amy's arms. 

"This here's your mommy, little one. Now you be a good Cadet and don't get
sick on her as well, okay?"

A drowsy face with a quizzical expression gazed out. Amy touched the baby's
palm, and tiny fingers closed tightly around hers.

"Hi there, Erin Jo Murdock," she said softly. The name they'd decided on if
she were a girl. 

"Her Apgar scores were eight and nine," the nurse said, referring to a sheet
of paper she had in her hand. "A very healthy baby."

"Yeah, she was screaming her head off before the doc even got her right out."
Murdock reached over to stroke the dark downy fuzz on his daughter's head.
"Hey, Amy, look at her - she's got hair! And fingernails, and toes -"

"I did hope she might have toes," Amy said dreamily. She jiggled the baby
slightly, and Erin Jo snuffled and looked up at her with Murdock's eyes. 

"Hey, Dad," she murmured, "I hope you're still here. I wanted to show you your
first grandchild."

And her father smiled at her through the sunshine.