“Eve, park it! Now!”
“Eve, for the love of…”
Willa shouts at me from one room and Ethan shouts from another. Isamu is unpacking glasses in the kitchen and Shep is gently removing a giant picture frame from my hands and guiding me back to the lawn chair they set up for me.
“Everyone is touching my things,” I moan.
“I know,” Shep says, bending down and kissing my forehead. “But you need to rest. Just tell everybody what to do, okay?”
Yep. I’m thirty-seven weeks along and moving apartments like a total glutton for punishment. I hate not being able to get everything exactly where I want it. I couldn’t even pack the way I wanted to. Everything got moved over here in great gobs and I’m going to lose my mind watching everything get dispersed to random locations. But I also really, really, really needed all hands on deck to get my new apartment unpacked and set up immediately.
“I can’t believe you kept this,” Ethan calls, walking his mother’s painting to where I can see it. “If I were you I’d have trashed it when I started being a dick.”
Willa laughs involuntarily. She fully intends to give Ethan a hard time from now into infinity, but he’s actually been quite likable over the last few weeks. He’s been super helpful in the move, and he and I have worked out a plan for the first few weeks that the baby is home. He’s making an effort and it shows. It’s impossible to hate him. Even for Willa.
“I want it to go in the baby’s room,” I tell him, and his eyes go a little soft as he brings the painting to the baby’s room and he and Willa argue over which wall to put it up on.
A glass of water is pressed into my hand and I look up to see Isamu. “You’re, um, leaking.” He goes bright red.
I lean down and sure enough, there is a small puddle of water underneath my lawn chair.
“Well,” I whisper to him. “That might be because I’m in labor.”
Yep. An hour ago my water broke while I was leaning over the sink fixing my hair. I thought it would be like somebody upturned a bucket all of a sudden. But it was more of a pop! and a dribble of water. I’ve started getting awfully crampy and with each wave of cramping, a little more water rushes out. If I don’t get out of this lawn chair and start marching around and doing things, I’m going to tell everyone. And I don’t want to tell everyone. Yet. I want to wait as long as I can until they make me go to the hospital.
His eyes grow wide, he purses his lips, and he glances at the room where Willa is currently unpacking my sock drawer. “Okay. Should you call someone?”
“I’m supposed to call my OB-GYN.”
He’s nodding his head. “Yes. Um. Will you? Do that? Please?”
I pat his shoulder. “Sure.”
He helps me stand and I dig my phone out of my pocket. I’m sure there’s a big wet spot on the back of my dress/shirt thing, so I sidestep out to the hallway so no one besides Isamu sees.
Lower East Side Partners in Obstetrics and Gynecology answers on the first ring. I get buzzed through to Dr. Bridget Muscles, who officially advises me to go to the hospital immediately because my water has broken. But from my birthing class I know that most women wait until contractions are four minutes apart. Then she tells me she’s not on call tonight so she likely won’t be the one delivering the baby.
I thank her. Hang up. And then immediately call another number.
She answers on the fifth ring.
“Nurse Louise? Oh, thank God you answered.”
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Eve Hatch. You gave me your personal number when we had coffee.”
“Oh. You’re lucky I answered. I thought you were a political call.”
“Well, I’m glad you answered too because my water just broke.”
She goes into nursing mode and asks me all the same questions Dr. Bridget Muscles asked me. And then she also tells me she’s not working tonight.
My stomach plummets. “You won’t be there?”
It’s not until this exact second that I realize that every single time I’ve pictured this over the last nine months, Nurse Louise has been there in my imagination.
“You can do this,” she tells me. “You’ve been through the birthing classes. You’ve got your support system. And at the end, you’ll hold the love of your life in your arms. Trust me. You can do this.”
“Okay,” I say on a deep breath.
And with that, I go back into the apartment where no one but Isamu knows. And then I wait three hours without telling anyone.
“Folks! Folks!” The security guard is shouting at us. “You don’t have to wait in the security line if she’s in labor. Just come on through.”
I’m a grateful, waddling mess as I circumvent the security line with Shep and Ethan in my wake. I pause midstep, a contraction hits, and I do my quick little pacing-breathing-hand-flapping thing that has started happening sometime in the last half hour and seems to sort of work.
I’ve had nightmares about the moment I check in to the hospital. I’ve pictured some judgmental nurse in scrubs loudly pointing to Ethan and Shep and demanding that I choose which one will stay by my side while the other one goes and waits outside by the garbage cans. To my relief, the nurse is actually pretty bored by it all and doesn’t let either of them back until I’ve had my first exam. I really don’t want to leave them, but the nurse is so official, so I wave goodbye and am escorted through double sliding doors and into a sort of laboring-woman weigh station. Each little paddock is separated from the others by a thin curtain and I can hear at least three other women hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ing their way towards motherhood. I’m told to lie down on this little table thingy, but another contraction hits and the physician’s assistant finds me pacing, breathing, and hand-flapping.
When the contraction has subsided, she helps me onto the table and gives me a physical exam. It’s a lovely and intimate moment defined by the snap of rubber gloves and blunt pressure on my cervix. Delish.
“You’re five centimeters,” she tells me, and I’m so relieved. I’d been worried they’d tell me I wasn’t far enough along and that I should go home. In fact, I think on the cab ride here I may have broken Shep’s fingers and screamed the words “If these turn out to just be Braxton-Hicks I want a fucking refund!”
She leads me to my room and another nurse joins us. She tries to talk to me but a contraction hits and I’m so over this laboring-alone bullshit. “Get. My. Boyfriend,” I pant to the nurse once the contraction is over.
Moments later, Shep is there. I’m in a gown, standing in water (that is still leaking and seems to be in endless supply), and then I’m falling into his arms. “Don’t leave again,” I sob into his shirt. “Stay here.”
“I won’t,” he swears. “I promise. I’ll stay here for all of it. I promise.”
There’s another contraction and this one is so much worse than the last. It’s like someone has turned the volume up to one hundred. I’m screaming into Shep’s chest and going down to my knees and breathing? What’s breathing. I’m so tired I’d like to be at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe I am at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe that’s why there’s only endless pressure.
The nurse is back and she’s saying something to Shep.
He relays it to me in simple terms and I fall in love with him all over again. “Ethan or no Ethan,” he asks.
“I don’t. give. a fuck,” I tell Shep between gasping breaths. And I really don’t. I thought I’d have strong opinions on this issue, but now that I’m in survival mode, as long as Shep is here, I don’t really care what else happens.
A few minutes later Ethan is there. I’m screaming into Shep’s chest and maybe I’ll puke and it’s endless it’s endless it’s endless. Then there’s a lot of Ethan’s voice. I don’t listen or don’t understand but Shep is shifting me, getting me into a seated position and then sitting behind me. I think Ethan is showing him what to do with his hands. The next contraction hits and then another on top of that, there’s no break between the two of them. I’m sweating and Shep is holding me up. Someone is feeding me broth and wiping my forehead. And I dimly register that it’s pitch-black outside. How long have we even been here?
I’m examined twice more? Thrice more? I can see on Shep’s face that the nurse thinks I haven’t progressed much. Why did the beginning go so fucking fast and now everything has stalled?
I’m comatose between contractions. I think it’s sleep? But really, it’s just a dark place where nothing can touch me and nothing exists. As soon as another contraction starts I’m on hands and knees and crawling across the floor. Shep holds ice packs on the back of my neck and inches along with me. Someone fans me for literal hours on end. Maybe Ethan? I don’t know.
I’m in the black space. I can smell Shep-sweat under my face and someone is stroking my hair. “I can’t do it,” I say. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”
I’m rolled forwards, my arms placed over something bouncy and my cheek pressed against cold plastic. It’s a yoga ball and there are new hands on me. “Shep? Shep?”
“I’m here,” he says, kneeling in front of me now, holding a cloth against my forehead. The new set of hands is an unfamiliar touch, firm and intense, and it stays with me all the way until the next contraction takes me. Sheets are placed under my knees and I labor like this, leaning on the ball and squeezed and prodded in the right places.
There’s more veggie broth and some temperature taking. I’m placed on an IV and put in a bed. I roll to one side and then the other and this time when I get an exam, it’s good news.
Someone says something to me, but I don’t hear. They say it again.
The third time, cool hands have me by the jawbone. “Hun. If you feel the need to push, you have to tell us. It’s just about time.”
I blink at the face that’s close to mine. “Nurse Louise,” I gasp. “You’re here.”
“I brought the yoga ball,” she tells me. “Do you have to push yet? Can you tell?”
“I don’t know,” I gasp.
She nods. “Then it’s not quite time. Just keep going. You’re doing well, kid.”
I can’t explain what it does, but it does something. Nurse Louise is here. For a moment, she feels like Corinne. She is nothing like Corinne, really, but for a moment, she ushers her in here, into this room.
The next hour or so is a complete blur. The contractions are one on top of the next and I’m somewhere back and forth between the black space and suffocating under the weight of contractions, convinced I cannot do this.
But then, something happens. It’s an odd change. There’s strength down to my fingers again.
“Pushing!” I shout to whoever is standing behind me, thumbs in my lower back. It’s Nurse Louise. Then it must be Shep’s lap that my head collapses into. Ethan shouts down the hallway and the medical staff is back.
Someone checks me. It’s go time.
I don’t recognize the doctor but I don’t care. Shep is here. Nurse Louise is here. Ethan is here somewhere.
Nurse Louise teaches me how to push through a contraction. When to breathe, when to rest. There is no more black space. Only pressure pain, not enough oxygen, and the vivid relief of pushing. Shep is urgently requesting more oxygen and I don’t know what he could possibly be talking about until an oxygen mask is pressed over my face between contractions. It helps immensely.
Time blurs. I’m being held on every side. I look down and Ethan is helping hold one of my legs up.
“The baby is crowning,” the doctor says. “It could be anytime in the next few pushes.”
“You’re doing it, Eve,” Shep says in my ear.
Ethan looks back at me. “Thank you,” he says, his voice steady and his eyes piercing mine. “Thank you.”
That thank you is what does it. Because at the core of it…Yes. This is for someone else. There is only one reason that anyone would ever endure something like this and it’s for the person who has yet to make an entrance. The person I’m about to meet. If I can just find the strength. If I can just keep pushing.
I’m breathing and screaming and Nurse Louise is counting the push seconds in my ear. There’s tight, bursting pressure and then suddenly, an instant, dizzying relief. Someone hot pink and squirming is in the doctor’s hands. I collapse sideways, onto Shep. There are tears everywhere between us. His face is soaking wet. “You did it,” he sobs into my hair. “You did it.”
I can’t take my eyes off the squirming baby.
“Give me” is all I can say, digging for the strength to lift my arms. “Please.”
They put the baby, wriggly and wet, onto my chest, and it’s the sort of weight that completes you. This perfect cap of wet-matted hair is all I can see, but this person is everythingeverythingeverything.
“Hi,” I say through tears. “Hi, I’m your mom.”
There’s a face right next to mine and it’s Ethan’s. He has one hand on the baby’s head, his eyes bloodshot and glittering.
“She. Has. Red. Hair,” he says before dissolving down into sobs. His forehead is pressing my arm, his hand still on the baby. “Thank you. Thank you,” he’s chanting. “I love you. Thank you.”
I don’t know if he’s talking to me or the baby, but it doesn’t really matter. Because right now, in this moment, me and the baby are one thing for Ethan. We’re his family. We made it. All the way here. A nine-month journey. And it’s just beginning.