To say that Alan was in agony listening to Melpomene sing felt like such a disservice to the actual agony the muse was going through, but hearing Melpomene singing songs about love made him feel how his own must have cut even as he tried to comfort.
“We’re here,” Alan whispered to her, helping to get her out of the car and towards Apollo. “Tomorrow all this will just be a bad memory and you’ll have a baby in your arms.”
Melpomene had no doubt that today would become a memory, oh yes, every moment of this night was pressing deep deep into her memory, every part of it, the terror and the pain and the weakness, and the aching and the comfort and the love. But a bad memory? He did himself a disservice.
That was a difficult thing to explain to him now though, as Apollo settled her in a wheelchair that one of the staff had waiting. Apollo crouched down in front of her and cupped her face in his hands. “You’ve made it this far,” he said. “Not long to go now.” And then other voices joined his, the staff joining in, the bustle of activity as the hospital swallowed them all up.
As they moved deeper into the hospital it felt like she moved deeper into a dream, as though the music had been the last thing holding her truly present. Not a nice dream, but one that grew more and more disjointed and feverish. One doctor spoke to her and then another, and she felt rather vividly the blood pressure cuff squeezing her arm, and something clamped down on her index finger and someone pressed a thermometer into her ear. Apollo, gently, bound all her hair into a loose braid and every time she tilted her head to the right Alan was still there, though it felt like she was looking at them all through the wrong end of a telescope.
The room they took her to was not what she’d expected. It was very clean, yes, but not the clinical style her imagination had told her to expect. There were homey touches everywhere, a comfortable chair at her bedside, art on the walls. It all reeked of the kind of financial pull Apollo had, and for this, he helped himself to the chair.
Just let it happen, she told herself, lying back on the hospital bed as a woman examined her. One of her hands gripped Alan’s, the other Apollo’s, standing (or sitting) vigil on either side of the bed, keeping back out of the way (though Apollo had a few opinions to share with the doctors). Just let it happen, let what will come, come. There was nothing else she could do. Fate had her. Apollo had her. Alan had her. She did not feel good, or right, or in control of anything at all, but they had her. She heard Apollo and one of the doctors have a sharp argument about bleeding, both of them trying to pull rank over the other, but a contraction interrupted the resolution and she never heard the outcome.