Free Our Lovely Baby Bump by Dahlia Rose Page B

for their arrival. Later, after dinner and a call to Angel, they sat on the couch. Her back was against the arm of the chair and her feet in his lap where he used his big hands to massage them.  On the TV she was watching her Firefly DVD, and he was asking her questions about the Captain and his crew.
    “What are we naming our girls?” she asked to get him off picking apart one of her favorite shows.
    “Good question,” John said in excitement.
    “I’d like to use my mother’s name somewhere,” Charlie said. “What about you?”
    “I won’t curse one of my daughters with the name of the woman who left me with an abusive bastard so she could go off and have a life without us,” John replied. “I’d like to use Angel somewhere in there.”
    Charlie smiled at him. “Me too.”
    In the end they decided the names and made the plan not to reveal them until the babies were born.  John went back to dissecting Firefly, and she continued to eat her ice cream while he did.
    “Tell them to stop kicking me,” he mumbled sleeping later on in bed. “Don’t make me come over there, girls.”
    She was pressed up against his back while they were falling asleep and like every night it seemed the twins knew their daddy was close. They started moving and kicked strong enough that John could feel it.
    She rubbed her belly. “Sssh, daddy is trying to sleep.”
    The babies kept moving and John rolled over. “Okay, you made me turn over.”
    Charlie laughed. “What are you going to do?”
    “You’ll see.” He snuggled her close and began to rub his hand over the mound of her stomach. “Behave girls, let’s get some sleep.”
    Charlie was surprised when the babies actually stopped moving, as if their father’s touch soothed them.
    “How did you do that?” she asked, amazed.
    He chuckled sleepily. “Daddy trick number one hundred and twenty.”
    “What are tricks from one to one hundred and nineteen?”
    “Ssssh, we’re sleeping,” John answered.
    Charlie laughed, and with his hand resting on her stomach, she listened to his breathing as she drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Six
     
    The thirty-eighth week of her pregnancy came, and Charlie lay in the hospital bed waiting to go back for to the operating room for her C-section.  Her hair was pulled up in a surgical cap, and a warm blanket was over her legs. John stood next to her, and Caleb and Angel were there as well.  Charlie looked around at her friends, her family. She was bringing her girls into their world with such love from all of them.
    “I want you to know the babies’ names,” she said suddenly.
    John looked at her curiously. “I thought you wanted to wait?”
    Charlie took his hand. “Their Aunt Angel and Uncle Caleb should know what to call them when they arrive.”
    “Yes, we should,” Angel said. “Shut up, John, it’s been killing me for weeks to know what you guys picked.”
    “Baby one will be Madeline Allison Greyward,” Charlie said. Allison was her mother’s name.
    “Baby two will be Marissa Angelica Greyward,” John said with a grin.
    “Oh, I get a baby girl named after me!” Angel ran over and hugged John and then bent down to hug and kiss Charlie. “I’m so excited to see them both, to hold them and smell their baby heads.”
    “I didn’t get a baby named after me,” Caleb grumbled good-naturedly.
    “Caleb as a girl name doesn’t work, my man,” John pointed out.
    Barbara walked in dressed in her surgical scrubs. “Are we ready to have some babies?”
    Charlie nodded. “After the needle to the belly for the amnio test, I’m ready for anything.”
    “John, are you going to be okay in there?” Caleb teased.
    “I get to sit down, so bite me dude,” John said cheerfully.
    “Then here we go,” Barbara said. ‘The nurse is coming in to wheel you back, and we’re going to get you prepped. You’ll get an IV and the epidural. After the babies are out you get to kiss them, and then we’ll put you to sleep for the next