Christophe Does Not normally remember his dreams, but when Charlie wakes him that morning he has time to sense images of a swimming pool fading inside his head in an oppressive blue glimmer. When he opens his eyes, though, all that remains is an unpleasant feeling, and his heart racing in his chest.
“It’s happening,” she says.
She is sitting next to him on the bed, looking very calm. The little night-light in their bedroom illuminates the objects around it with a peaceful, distant sketchiness. Christophe sits up and has a drink of water, his eyelids fluttering as he emerges from sleepiness.
“What time is it?”
“Five,” Charlie replies.
They smile at each other in the darkness. Christophe pushes the duvet away and shivers. An instant later, he’s on his feet.
“It’s okay, we’ve got time,” he says.
But he is already rushing over to the closet where they keep the bag that has been packed for days, containing everything they need: nightshirt, underwear, toiletry bag, a few books to pass the time while they’re waiting.
“Don’t forget your phone charger.”
“I’m going to call my mother.”
“Just wait. We can do that later.”
Inside their little apartment, they run smoothly through the long-planned actions. From this point on, everything matters. Christophe takes a shower, gets dressed while drinking his coffee, and takes one last look at the checklist magnetized to the fridge door. Charlie, meanwhile, sits in the kitchen, the bag at her feet, and gazes silently at her enormous belly. Sometimes, looking at that swollen bulge, Christophe has the feeling that what he sees is an autonomous object, a perfect egg already leading its own existence. He and Charlie have been drawn into its orbit, and soon the whole world will follow. The young woman seems nervous despite the vast underwater calmness that surrounds her. It is strange being there, so close to the end, just as the sky is starting to lighten. The neighbors are still asleep, the apartment building rests in the early-morning silence, and through the window they can see streetlamps, other buildings, the Moselle flowing quietly below.
“You okay?” Christophe asks.
“Yeah.”
As always, he does what’s expected of him. He is gentle, he doesn’t panic, he checks his pockets, his phone, the car keys, their ID papers, then picks up the bag.
“Okay, let’s go.”
At a red light, he takes her hand and holds it for a moment. Don’t be scared. It’ll all be fine. Charlie isn’t scared. The town opens like a flower under the lurid pink-orange-blue dawn. The time has come for them to leap into the unknown. Happiness is a strange thing.
At the reception desk, a woman with mauve eyelids takes down their details with robotic indifference, then tells them to sit in the waiting room. Their names will be called. After that, Charlie’s case is processed in a slightly irritating atmosphere of hygiene and slowness. There is something almost incongruous about her contractions amid the sterile white decor of the hospital room. A nurse with braided hair comes to see them at regular intervals, her name badge revealing that she is called Coralie. She chews gum and wears compression stockings and Crocs. Every time they ask her when the epidural will be given, she replies: “Soon.” It takes less than ten minutes of this for Charlie to want her dead. Because the pain has already set in, with its peaks and waves that crush her kidneys, break her back. Occasionally Christophe sees her face turn pale and gaunt as she rolls around on the bed, a victim of the battle taking place in her womb.
“Call her!”
Christophe obeys. Coralie reappears, still chewing, and takes the patient’s pulse, before offering her a couple of Tylenol. After a few more equally futile visits, she decides to give them one of those prenatal exercise balls.
“Try this, I think it’ll help.”
Charlie can’t believe it. She watches Coralie in her blue scrubs calmly leave the room, the door closing in slow motion.
“She’s gaslighting me.”
For now, she doesn’t dare show the anger she feels to the nurse, so she focuses her resentment on Christophe, who placidly accepts the situation.
“Why don’t you try the ball? It might help,” he suggests imprudently.
The look his girlfriend gives him leaves no room for doubt about her thoughts on the matter. He needs to find a solution quickly, and something more scientific than that stupid fucking ball.
Ten minutes later, Charlie is writhing in agony, jaw clenched.
“Go and find someone!”
“The anesthesiologist will be here soon.”
Charlie kicks one of her sneakers across the room.
“Get a fucking move on! This hurts.”
Christophe rushes out and finds Coralie in the staff room, where she is drinking coffee with a few of her colleagues. They do not look too pleased at seeing him barge in on their conversation.
“It’s my girlfriend. She’s in so much pain…”
“The doctor will be there soon.”
“Can’t you give her something?”
“You just have to be patient.”
“But she’s in pain!”
With a sigh, Coralie stands up and follows him to the room. Behind him, Christophe hears her Crocs squeaking on the plastic floor. He wants to go faster, but he’s too afraid of annoying this nurse, who is the only one that can offer Charlie relief.
“All right, so what’s going on?”
Charlie is kneeling on the floor as if praying, butt in the air and arms outstretched in front of her. When she looks up, it is instantly clear that a physical attack on Coralie cannot be ruled out.
“I want the anesthetic,” she grunts.
“The anesthesiologist isn’t here yet,” the nurse replies, unfazed.
Coralie sees women like this every day, the ones who whine all the time and the ones who give birth like they’re mailing a letter. She’s seen complications too, the bloody bullfight going on for hours on end, sometimes ending with tragedy, a bluish little head, the cord wrapped around the neck. She’s seen first-time mothers split open and other women broken in by five pregnancies, the whole industry of birth, no pomp or ceremony, just routine. She no longer gets emotional about it. Habit is her anesthetic, professionalism her buffer. And then there’s the example set by the doctors, who often take pride in their coldness and consider these swollen patients with the godlike gaze of someone boasting seven years of higher education. And seen from those heights, it must be said that there is something a little bestial about these laboring women that does not encourage solicitude.
“Find him,” Charlie repeats through gritted teeth.
“I really think you need to go and find him,” agrees Christophe, who is starting to feel slightly unwell himself.
“You just have to be patient,” repeats the nurse, without departing from her calm indifference.
“Oh fuck…”
A contraction hits Charlie and she writhes again, ending up on her back, arms tensed, fists balled. Then the pain recedes. Her hands open and tears roll over her temples.
“Tell her to go and find that fucking doctor or I really will get angry.”
Christophe, smiling weakly, leads the nurse out of the room.
“I think you need to do what she says now.”
“You’re not the only patients in this hospital, you know.”
Christophe has started to sweat. He looks out the window, takes a deep breath.
“Is that the staff parking lot, there?”
Coralie glances outside, with a small frown, and nods.
“If you don’t do something, I’m going to have to smash some windshields.”
“What?”
“Find someone. Quickly. Or I get my crowbar and I start breaking glass.”
The nurse is used to difficult patients, but this is something else.
“Stay here,” she says, stalking off.
“Thank you,” breathes Christophe.
He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and slows his breathing down before going back to the room. He knows he will carry out his threat if necessary.
Five minutes later, a tall man with a buzz cut and a signet ring bearing a coat of arms enters the room. He glares reproachfully and says: “What is all this nonsense, eh? Are you the vandal?”
Christophe gives an embarrassed smile.
“This isn’t the Wild West, monsieur.”
“Are you the anesthesiologist?”
“Are you the father?”
“I thought you hadn’t arrived yet.”
The man holds out his hand, struggling to conceal his amusement at Christophe’s threats of destruction.
From her bed, Charlie has watched the whole scene.
“Hey…remember me?”
After that, things happen with relative smoothness. Charlie is taken to the delivery room, where she is given an epidural injection and falls in love with the neofascist anesthesiologist. And then the real waiting starts. From time to time, a nurse—no longer Coralie—comes in to check the dilation of the cervix. She sticks her gloved fingers into Charlie’s vagina while Charlie stares at the ceiling. Each time, the nurse looks disappointed. Charlie is just going to have to bear the pain patiently. Hours pass, filled with a strange fatigue that is both irritating and oppressive. Sitting near his girlfriend, Christophe tries to take her mind off things. He holds her hand, tells her he’s there. Not that this is much use to her. At times Charlie wishes she had never gotten herself into this mess. But at other moments she gazes tenderly at Christophe and slowly nods off, while Christophe takes advantage of her sleepiness to play Tetris on his phone or send texts to his friends. When his father finds out what’s happening, he replies instantly:
“On my way.”
Twenty minutes later, Gérard texts his son to say he is somewhere in the labyrinth of that hospital, killing time by feeding his loose change into a vending machine. Christophe could not do anything to dissuade him from coming, and he’s glad of that now. His father’s presence, even at a distance, reassures him.
After hesitating for a long time, he also decides to tell Julien what’s happening, sending him a brief text and a photograph of himself and Charlie. It has been almost ten years since he heard from his big brother. The last time they saw each other was when Julien came from Montpellier for their mother’s funeral.
It was after Christophe’s birth that his mother had quit her job at the driving school to take care of her children. Much later, when her younger son had started high school, she wanted to work again, but in the meantime the employment market had changed beyond recognition. In 1975, all you needed was energy and a good work ethic. By 1990, words like “skills” and “flexibility” were all the rage. Beggars could not be choosers.
Sylvie, however, was not the type to kowtow to anyone. She had spent too long living in a bourgeois milieu and was not exactly overflowing with positivity. Thanks to the success of the store, she and Gérard had become recognizable local figures, the kind of people you saw at fundraising parties for the mayor’s office, at the Bastille Day celebrations, the kind of people who gave generously for the construction of a new village hall or to help the hockey team. They held small cocktail parties in their home to which they invited other well-off shopkeepers, an educational assistant, a pharmacist couple who lived nearby. Champagne flowed like water and when Sylvie reached out to pick a pistachio from a bowl, her wrist jingled with gold. They weren’t exactly rich, but through hard work they had been able to drive a Mercedes, buy a television for practically every room in the house, and have the attic converted. Gérard would periodically think about buying a small chalet so they could spend their weekends in the mountains.
So, really, what was the point in getting some low-paid job that might put them in a higher tax bracket? Following this logic, Sylvie gave up on the idea of a professional career.
“Anyway, I hate being useful,” she said, taking a drag on her Winston.
In fact, Christophe had no idea what she did with her time, all those years. A bit of gardening, probably. Some TV soaps in the afternoons. And she spent quite a lot of time looking after her own parents, who weren’t getting any younger. No doubt she felt something missing in that indoor life, caught between the veranda, where she watered her plants, and the hairdressing salon, which at least took up an hour of every week. She didn’t complain, but perhaps she would have liked to see more of the world, or to learn an instrument. After all, she often talked about that IQ test she’d taken as a teenager, according to which she was in the ninetieth percentile of the French population for intelligence, something that always annoyed the hell out of Gérard. Maybe, too, she would have liked to leave him, but she stayed because she had no income, no savings, only a tiny pension. Sylvie was dependent on her husband, and even if he didn’t abuse that power, they were both still aware of it. For a long time, her life had been stuck in a rut.
And then, one day, while she was pushing her cart through the refrigerated aisle of the local Intermarché, Sylvie collapsed. At the hospital, the doctor came to talk to Christophe and his father in the corridor. They had found a sort of blotch, like a little patch of grayish lichen, on the right side of Sylvie’s torso, a few centimeters below her armpit. It had probably been there for weeks. She had never told anyone about it and Gérard hadn’t noticed it.
“It’s a melanoma. We’re going to take some X-rays.”
“Is it serious?”
“We’ll see.”
When Gérard asked his wife why she hadn’t mentioned it, she just said that it wasn’t a big deal. The X-rays begged to differ. There were clearly some pale spots, like bright blisters glimmering in the lung, tiny fingers of whiteness spreading across the rib cage. The oncologist, who knew how to read such images, made an appropriate facial expression. Christophe had overheard him deep in discussion with some interns in a corridor, each of them giving their diagnosis and suggesting the most effective treatments. But Professor Truchy had cut them short. He had seen thousands of cancers, particularly since the Chernobyl disaster, whose effects had supposedly stopped at the Ukrainian border. According to him, there was no point torturing this poor woman. All they could give her were benzodiazepines, antiemetics, and Xanax. Hearing this, Christophe felt a vast emptiness inside him. So it was over, already, without warning. In the space of a few seconds, he became a child again. Mommy. It suddenly occurred to him that he barely even knew her. Afterward, he had to put on a brave face, while haunted by the fear that she had done it on purpose, to escape. She had always been a big fan of irony.
Soon, under the effect of the medication, Sylvie sank into a soft and curiously cheerful state, at least when she was conscious. Gérard stayed with her in the mornings, and Christophe came after work. She slept through most of it. She had to be intubated because she couldn’t swallow anymore, and she quickly lost a great deal of weight. It was the most amazing thing to witness: what happened to a body in thrall to disease, her skin like taut parchment over the bridge of her nose, at her joints, her belly swollen despite being empty, and those strange bright hues that appeared in various places, a ragged dark blue around her eyes, the rainbows that stretched across her arms even though she never hurt herself, the ultraviolet of her veins, and already that hideous union of yellows and greens that scared away the pretty colors of good health. And, beneath her chin, in the folds of her armpits, the thickly crumped skin reminiscent of a turkey’s neck.
The hockey team was wallowing in the middle of the pack that season and, at twenty-five, Christophe no longer had any illusions about his sports career. The highest level of the professional game would remain forever out of reach. But he still loved playing, the sensations of a Saturday night, trips with his friends, and the special status that his position on the team gave him. Now he was the one hazing the younger players, seventeen-year-old kids all wobbly on their skates who went flying when you barged into them.
Once, on a trip to Villard-de-Lans, the players sneaked out of their hotel to go clubbing. They followed the guardrail along the road, twenty of them in single file, in the middle of the night, like Snow White’s dwarves. In the end, they found a place called Macumba or something where they could drink and dance, and Christophe even managed to hook up with a waitress, a beautiful brunette with large breasts, a bared midriff, and rings in her nose and ears. Around five in the morning, the two of them went at it in the storeroom where they kept the alcohol, and when Christophe emerged afterward the other freaks were all there waiting for him in the parking lot, applauding. After that, they went back the way they’d come, a bunch of young males numbed by booze and exhaustion, stumbling back to the hotel in a straggly line. When they got there, the coach was waiting for them in the lobby and he gave them the dressing-down of the century. At eight o’clock they all had to put on their uniforms and run around the stadium, which was next to the hotel. Most of them threw up, and the team lost 7–2 to Villard, but Christophe came home happy.
Playing hockey kept him from having to make difficult decisions, sheltered him from the usual age-related losses. And after spending two hours at his mother’s bedside, the need to get on the ice became almost unbearable. There, he could empty his head and skate until his body was exhausted. After practice, sitting naked in the locker room, he would look at himself in the mirror, his dick hanging between his thick thighs, his shoulders massive and aching, his hair soaked with sweat, his belly heaving in time with his breaths, his muscles taut under his skin, from neck to hips. And he would see the vitality that was so visible in him, that shone through his skin, reddening his cheeks, making his whole body burn. Every day, he wore himself out for two hours, and when he woke the next day his strength was still there, reborn, apparently endless. He refused to believe in his mother’s body, which he no longer dared even touch. Hockey kept him distanced from old age; it denied death. Sometimes he would wake up crying and would not be able to fall back asleep until morning.
After three weeks, her decline steepened. Sylvie was awake for only about two hours a day, and then her eyes and mouth never opened. By the end, she would raise two fingers to show that she could hear, but she no longer had the faintest idea who was talking to her. One night, Christophe kissed her on the forehead for the last time. A chemical odor emanated from her skin, which was almost cold and as moist as a slug. She died a few hours later. By that point, all he felt was relief.
When he went to pick up his brother at the train station, the day before her funeral, Julien immediately made his intentions clear.
“Drop me off at the hotel. I’ll be fine.”
“Dad’s made a baeckeoffe. Your bedroom’s all ready.”
“I ate on the train.”
In the end, Julien agreed to stay the night. In the yard, he stood and looked up at the big house in the darkness, still filled with their mother’s fading presence.
“It’s like Versailles or something,” said Julien, gesturing to the three lit-up windows.
“He’s even put the heating on upstairs.”
An ironically raised eyebrow. “Wow.”
Inside, the two brothers were welcomed by the delicious smell of the baeckeoffe that permeated every corner of the first floor, a smell of patience and prolonged preparation that offered a kind of proof.
Julien dropped his bag in the hallway but kept his jacket on. Then the two boys headed to the kitchen, where their father was waiting for them, sitting in his chair, his half-moon glasses perched on his nose as he pondered a sudoku grid. He was wearing his apron and the table had been carefully set. He had even taken out the Lunéville tableware for the occasion. The fluorescent light above the sink bathed the room in a stark, efficient glare.
Seeing his elder son, Gérard cried: “Ah!,” then struggled to his feet. He’d made an effort with his clothes, Christophe noticed. For once, he wasn’t wearing the sweatpants that were baggy at the knees and exposed his butt crack whenever he bent over. On the other hand, he had not gone as far as putting on shoes. The old slippers he wore gave him a disarming appearance. The last time Julien saw him, almost eight years earlier, his father had still been a man grappling with the complexities of life and work, worrying endlessly about money and his employees, a man in a state of constant vexation. You could see it in his muscles back then, in the tightness of his shoulders, the lines of his face, in his eyes when you suddenly became one more problem that he had to solve. Now, however, retired and freshly widowed, practically alone and doomed to end that way, Gérard had completely relaxed. He was almost another man entirely, with his slippers and his apron, a man who set the table and didn’t mind eating dinner after seven. He and Julien air-kissed, and he asked his son what he’d like to drink. Julien objected that it was already late.
“Come on, we’re not in a rush, are we?”
Finally, Julien hung his jacket on the back of his chair and sat down at the table. They raised their beer glasses and made a toast.
“To Mom.”
“To us.”
The bottles left clear circular imprints on the white tablecloth. The linen was thick and well made, the kind of thing that could be passed on for generations. This tablecloth had seen endless Sundays and Christmases; it had been pressed down by Easter lamb dishes, by the bottles and glasses of many parties and events. It had witnessed men slurping vintage wines and gobbling meat in rich sauces, men with big feet and strong political opinions, laughing like ogres, asses glued to their seats while their anxious, sober wives shuttled between the dining room and the kitchen, the women finally gathering to wash dishes and chat together in secret, their guards down, their tongues sharpened, chuckling as their husbands slouched at the table, belts loosened, pouring themselves a drop of eau de vie and stubbing out a cigarette at the bottom of a coffee cup as they prepared to deliver the final word on whatever subject they had been discussing.
Children’s hands had grabbed and smeared this tablecloth, fingers wet with saliva picking up bread crumbs in the pause between a pear and the dessert. The tablecloth had seen an endless parade of simple, hearty family meals—hot pots, sauerkraut, beef stews—and many bottles of red. Around it, bodies had shrunk, husbands had died of old age, women of grief, and vice versa. The stories that tablecloth could have told…In the weft of its fabric were all the secrets of a family, going back years and years. There was even one male cousin who liked boys, and who had once brought home his “friend.” It had seen every aspect of ordinary life. Wills that had set siblings at one another’s throats, a succession of crises over nothing very much, tears shed and blood spilled, money lost and lives remade. Time had passed, but the tablecloth had remained white. A father and his two sons were eating at it now. They drank a Pinot Noir from Alsace that cheered them up and, in the temporary warmth of a pre-funeral dinner, were reunited.
“You should have come back sooner,” said Gérard, after putting the plates in the dishwasher.
Julien, who’d had a bit too much to drink, made a vague gesture, his head moving from side to side. This concession was enough for the father, who made no attempt to drive home his advantage.
Seeing them like that, the hatchet half-buried, Christophe could not remember what had caused the old animosity in the first place. Animosity there had been, though, and plenty of it. They had even come to blows. In fact, they had always fought. Gérard used to give his son a good hiding when he was little—accepted behavior at the time; educational even—but when Julien grew big enough to hit him back, their hostility had immediately swelled to the dimensions of a minor news story. Julien had shoved his father against a wall and said: Next time, I’ll kill you. Now the mother was no longer around. Even if they’d wanted to fight now, they wouldn’t have known how. That relationship had disappeared with her.
The three men sipped a digestif made from raspberries and damson plums and talked about the good old days. Then the father took the old photograph albums out of the cupboard. There were about ten of them, starting with their ancestors and ending in the early nineties. The photos from the seventies had aged badly. Their hues seemed to have lost all life, greens turning diarrhea-colored, whites opalescent, muddying into a sludge of bland brownness. All the same, the two sons were amused by the bold decor of that period: bizarre patterns covering everything from wallpaper to women’s dresses. Looking through those photographs, their lives flashed past before their eyes: Julien as a baby, the park, a sandcastle, his face in a balaclava, Christophe in a ski suit standing in front of a snowman. The strangest thing was seeing their parents behind them, and what had been captured on film without their knowledge: their youth, affection, smiles, things forgotten afterward in the tide of gloomy Sundays and family spats. And yet there they were, caught forever, at thirty, at forty, at a campsite, on the beach, with a stroller, holding a child by the hand, so young and fresh-faced.
“Look,” their father said, pointing. “Your mother still had long hair back then.”
“I don’t remember that Chevignon jacket.”
“Yeah, I bugged Mom for weeks to get that. I bet you never knew how much she paid for it.”
“Oh really?” said their father.
And for a moment, the old hostility was rekindled, the father duped, the mother going behind his back, the little secrets and plots, the undermining of the master’s authority.
“Okay, I think that’s enough,” said Julien.
And he stood up, somber-faced, leaving his glass untouched on the table.
“We prepared your room.”
“Thanks. Good night.”
“Good night, son.”
The next day, a lot of people turned up for the funeral. Sylvie Marchal had lived her whole life in Cornécourt, which naturally forged bonds. Gérard took a quiet delight in his role as widower. He had always enjoyed feeling important, and he didn’t deny himself the pleasure even on this sad occasion. It was his vice, this love of pomp and ceremony. The mayor came, and the two men talked for a while. They had also met up for the occasional brioche at Le Narval.
“The prick even trimmed his mustache,” Julien observed from the other end of the table, watching his eagerly smiling father, like a campaigning politician.
“Well, you shined your shoes,” replied Christophe.
Julien smiled at that, apparently pleased to be there. He asked Christophe about hockey, then fell silent. Christophe had imagined that his brother would want to know more about their mother, her last weeks at the hospice. But those words were never spoken. Julien left that evening, on the train.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for a while?” his father asked.
“No, I have to go. I’ve got work tomorrow.”
They kissed cheeks outside the café, the son keeping his hands in his pockets, then walking away with his silence and his grievances. That was when Christophe realized he no longer had a mother.
Charlie, Exhausted, Has nodded off. When she opens her eyes, she finds Christophe taking a selfie.
“It’s for my brother.”
“Ah. I doubt he’ll reply.”
“I don’t even know if this is still his number.”
“What about your father?”
“He’s in the hospital somewhere. I don’t want him here—he might start yelling at us for taking too long.”
Charlie manages a brief smile. Her head is thrown back, like a swooning saint.
“He really can’t wait, can he?”
“I know. Sometimes I wonder if he’s more excited about this kid than we are.”
The hours pass ever more slowly, but at least Charlie is no longer in pain. Every time the anesthesiologist pokes his head through the door to check on her, she looks at him like a lovestruck teenager and Christophe sighs.
“Look, I can’t help having feelings for him.”
“It’s the painkillers.”
The nurse comes by regularly too, to monitor the patient’s progress. She smiles at them and speaks in that high-pitched voice that people use when talking to old people or foreigners, but despite her cheerful demeanor they can tell things aren’t going the way they’re supposed to.
Around noon, the monitor starts to beep.
“What’s that?”
The two of them freeze, panic-stricken. The machine that monitors the vital signs of both mother and child continues to emit that stress-inducing beeping noise. Christophe leaves the room and returns ten minutes later with a third nurse, who examines the green sine waves on the screen.
“It’s nothing. He’s just a bit tired. Let’s take a look at your cervix, shall we?”
The nurse puts on a rubber glove and reaches under the sheet. Charlie grimaces.
“Not there yet.”
“So what do we do?”
“Nothing, for now. The doctor will be here soon.”
The couple are left alone to stare at the trace of the baby’s heartbeat. The alarm goes off again, then stops. Charlie breaks down and starts to cry.
“I can’t do this. I’m so tired.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Easy for you to say.”
She sheds a few more tears, then wipes them away with the back of her hand, and they smile at each other.
After two weeks of classes with the midwife, after reading all those dumb books on how to be a good mommy and a good daddy to little Mr. Baby, they are now caught in the harsh grip of uncertainty. From time to time, Charlie, having swallowed too much air, lets off a long, odorless fart, but nobody laughs. Christophe, sobered by his helplessness, forces himself not to keep looking at his watch.
A little later, the obstetrician drops by to check on the state of play. Another gloved hand reaching under the sheets. Things are still not really advancing. Four centimeters max, and the machine starts beeping again. In the dark-ringed eyes of the future parents, the same imploring look. The obstetrician, with her impressive chignon, tries to reassure them.
“Everything’s fine. There’s just a small problem with the contractions. They’re starting to tire out the baby’s heart. We can’t let this go on too long.”
“Or what?”
“It’ll be okay,” the woman in white tells them.
“I want to go home,” says Charlie, and again the tears trickle down her gray, exhausted face.
The obstetrician’s eyes seem to read her like a scanner, moving one way and then the other.
“Just relax,” she says, before disappearing. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Another two hours of this—the stress, the uncertainty, the fatigue—and then Charlie tears the sensors off her belly. The beeping stops at last.
“You can’t do that…”
But she is already getting out of bed. She puts a foot on the floor, and Christophe catches her just before she collapses.
“Charlie, you can’t! Your legs don’t work because of the anesthetics.”
“I want to go home!”
But by the end of that sentence, her aggression has melted into a sob.
Christophe helps her lie down, then goes off in search of a nurse. This time, there’s no one around. The corridor is deserted. Open doors lead to empty rooms. He stands there, panting, all strength gone, his impossible duty weighing him down. He wants to go home too. He sits with his back against the wall and tries to catch his breath. He must get through this. He realizes he has entered a new part of his life, where doing his best is no longer enough.
Another three hours pass in a muffled daze. The room is like a raft adrift on a raging river, the two survivors clinging to it on the verge of killing each other. Thankfully, Charlie slips into a restless sleep and Christophe has time to send some texts to his friends. Greg and Marco reply with brief messages of encouragement, full of short words, clapping-hand emojis, and exclamation points. The obstetrician returns and tells them off for unplugging the monitors. A nurse is called to strap the sensors back in place. Charlie groans. The screen lights up again, bold red numbers, that infernal beeping.
“That’s not good,” says the obstetrician, leaning close to the screen. “The baby’s heartbeat is too slow. How long have you been here?”
“Ten hours.”
“Hmm, not that long really.”
Christophe sees war declared in Charlie’s eyes. In the same unruffled tones, the obstetrician says:
“We’re going to have to intervene.”
“What do you mean?” asks Christophe.
“C-section.”
Although Charlie isn’t crazy about the idea of being cut up, she breathes more easily at this news. Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel.
After another injection delivered by the anesthesiologist, she is wheeled to the delivery room. Christophe stays with her while the obstetrician, a nurse, and the midwife get ready at the other side of the surgical area, all of them in blue masks, scrubs, and caps.
“Do you work out?” the obstetrician asks.
“A little. Why?”
“Your abdominal wall is really thick. I can’t get him out of there.”
“Did you already cut me?” asks Charlie, trying to sit up so she can see.
“Don’t move,” the obstetrician barks from behind her mask.
Christophe is getting cold sweats. Horrific images flash through his head. He can see his girlfriend’s guts, only a few feet from where he stands.
“Wait!” Charlie shouts, feeling a sudden sharp pain in her abdomen.
Too late. Two hands lift up a rounded, bloody shape, the closed features of a face vaguely discernible. This apparition lasts only a second. The tiny body has already vanished. Then they hear wails—distraught, staggering, unimaginably new.
After that, everything happens in a rush. The bundled-up infant is handed to his mother, who barely has time to kiss him, to feel his hot skin against her chest. Seconds later, she is taken away to be sewn up. And the midwife carries the child away, telling Christophe to follow.
“What name have you chosen?”
Christophe, in his surgical gown, trails her into an adjoining room.
“Gabriel,” he says.
“Oh, yeah, we get a lot of them these days.”
The midwife’s tactlessness makes no impression on the stunned father. Then this total stranger, whose face he will forget even while he remembers her gestures, cleans the baby before asking the father to keep an eye on him while she goes off to get some cotton wool. So Christophe finds himself alone with this thing, his son, who is cold and screaming loudly from his small, pink, empty mouth. The father looks around for someone to help him, then leans over the baby, who, lying on the changing mat, is starting to get some color in his face. He puts his forearms either side of the miniature body, tilts his torso down, and kisses the fragile head, the soft belly and arms. He whispers a sweet nothing into the child’s ear and the screaming stops.
“Don’t be scared. I’m here.”
The baby’s eyes are still closed, but he clings to that sliver of familiarity, the timbre of that voice. Christophe presses his lips against the infant’s forehead, breathing in the sweet smell of hygiene products from the soft fuzz of hair.
“Ah, you’re getting to know each other!” the midwife exclaims, coming back into the room with the cotton wool.
She skillfully puts a diaper on the baby, then a onesie, then pajamas, before placing a pale cotton hat on his head and handing this perfectly wrapped parcel to the father, who wonders how on earth he is going to manage not to smash it to pieces.
“No, don’t worry, he’s a tough little guy.”
Now they are in another room, as neutral as all the previous ones, and the nurse is fixing a sensor to the baby’s index finger.
“What’s that?”
“It’s okay, just something to make sure his heart is beating the way it should. I’ll leave the two of you in peace now.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
Christophe stares in panic at this heavyset woman who actually knows how to look after a baby.
“You’ll be fine,” she says with casual certainty. “Just wait and see. You’ll soon the get the hang of it.”
She nods at a chair, and Christophe carefully sits down, as if what he holds in his arms is as delicate as a soap bubble. The midwife makes the facial expression that people make when they are trying to reassure you: duck lips, eyes closed…no problem, you’ve got this.
And so Christophe is left alone with his son once again. He watches the baby, who is sleeping like a maniac, and listens to his tiny breathing, which is all he has. How can such a creature possibly survive? Then the child wakes up and seems to look for something with his earnest, incapable eyes.
“I’m here,” Christophe says quietly.
The baby’s eyelids flutter.
“I’m here.”
He runs his fingertip along the child’s nose and Gabriel’s eyes close reflexively.
There’s a knock at the door. Christophe’s father stands in the doorway, his arms full of gifts, smiling broadly under his graying mustache.
“Everything okay?”
Christophe nods.
“And the mom?”
“They’re looking after her. She had a C-section.”
“Ouch.”
Gérard takes a couple of steps into the room. He’s looking for a place to put the flowers, the chocolates, the enormous light brown teddy bear he’s holding. After doing so, he tiptoes over to them.
“Can I hold him?”
Christophe hesitates, then stands up to hand him the child.
“What’s his name?”
“Gabriel.”
“That’s a girl’s name.”
The old man is holding the baby in his arms now.
“He already looks like a Marchal,” he says, leaning closer and planting a kiss on the white cotton hat.
Christophe does not have the heart to contradict him.
“Sleep, little one, sleep,” the kid’s grandfather coos. “You’ve got all the time in the world.”