Ken didn’t know how much more he could take. Every time Daisy cried out, he wanted to make it stop. He wanted to make the person hurting her regret doing so, but he had no one to blame. He had to passively accept her pain, and he did not like that.
She stayed out of bed as long as she could. She felt better standing and bending and then walking off the contraction after it ended. At one point, hours after they arrived, her water broke. That’s when the nurse put her in bed.
Doctor Reynolds came in and confirmed that she was close. “I’ve just left Valerie. I’m sure you’ll hear her news soon,” she said, stripping off her gloves and going to the door. “I’m going to grab a coffee, but I will be right back. It won’t be long now.”
As the doctor left and the door shut behind her, his mother came in. “Valerie had a girl. She’s doing great. Both of them are.”
“Another girl!” Daisy exclaimed.
Ken stood and slipped his hands in his pockets. “Valerie’s okay? No hip issues?”
Rosaline shook her head. “No. I think they’ll know more once she gets up and moves around.”
Ken checked his watch and paced to the window, staring out onto the parking lot. Daisy had started labor six hours ago. “Can’t believe you all went into labor on the same day.”
Daisy turned her head and smiled at him. “Kind of speaks more to God’s hand, doesn’t it?” She spoke in a rough, exhausted voice.
The emotion that filled him at that thought took his breath away. He nodded but did not speak. Instead, he looked from his wife to his mother and then back out the window and thought about thirty-three years ago and his mom giving birth to three baby boys in one day. He wondered if they would have a girl, making it three girls today.
A nurse came in, very chipper and loud. Ken hadn’t seen her yet. She had a singsong voice that made the muscles in his neck tense. “How are we doing?”
Daisy smiled at her, always gracious. “They said I’m close.”
The nurse nodded. “I know your birth plan says no epidural, but you’re getting close to the point where it will be too late to have one if you don’t get one now. Is that still your wish?”
Ken turned and avoided saying anything. He had promised to help talk her out of getting one if she claimed to want one, but he didn’t realize how much pain she would actually experience. He also had not anticipated how he would react to seeing her in pain. Why not? Why had he not taken that into account ahead of time? He waited to see what she would say.
“Maybe,” Daisy looked at Ken with pleading eyes. “No. No, I don’t think so. I don’t want one.”
The nurse patted her pocket and said, “Then I guess you don’t need this IV. I’m going to leave it in here just case we need to get to a vein.” She set it on a silver tray that already had some medical implements laid out.
The way Daisy cried and moaned during the contractions, he knew they had grown in intensity and, with that, pain. Ken didn’t understand her desire to experience the pain, but he had to respect it. The helplessness and impotence he experienced with each contraction frustrated him like nothing he had ever known.
After the nurse left, Ken walked over to Daisy’s bed and pressed his lips to her forehead. She looked up at him. Her face had tired lines, but her brown eyes glowed with anticipation. “I admit it. I was tempted.”
He smiled and didn’t reply because any words that came to him would have encouraged her to get one. She had grown accustomed to his silences. His mom rubbed Daisy’s shins through the blanket. “Do you need anything?”
She shook her head. “I need to dilate one more centimeter. I don’t think you can help with that.”
She chuckled. “I’m going to go find your parents.”
Daisy smiled. “Thank you. They’re down in the cafeteria.”
As the door shut behind his mom, Daisy held her hand up, and he grasped it, sandwiching it with both of his. “Ken!” She started to squeeze his hand almost painfully. “Oh!”
He brushed her hair away from her forehead and pressed the back of her hand against his cheek. She breathed through the contraction but yelled out at the end. “Okay! We’re moving now!”
She barely finished the words when another contraction had her. For several minutes, Ken breathed with her, touched her, stroked her, and prayed for her. When she said, “I need to push!” he pressed the call button.
“Can I help you?”
Before Ken could speak, Daisy yelled out, “I need to push!”
Seconds later, a nurse came in the room pulling a glove on. She checked Daisy and then hit a button on the wall. Another nurse arrived.
Ken stayed near Daisy’s head while they arranged her on the bed. By the time they had her set up, Doctor Reynolds had arrived.
“I hear we’re ready! Let’s welcome baby Dixon number three into this world.” Doctor Reynolds murmured something to a nurse, and then she pushed a stool to the foot of the bed. “I’m just going to check.” She glanced under the sheet the nurses had arranged, then peered over it and smiled at Daisy. “I see a head!”
She nodded to the nurses in the room. They moved to flank the bed, each one taking Daisy under her knee to hold her legs. The doctor said, “On your next good contraction, I want you to push.”
Ken could tell when the contractions started because Daisy squeezed his hand and bared down. He slipped his arm behind her shoulders. “That’s it,” he said softly. “You got this.”
Daisy bared her gritted teeth and groaned through them, sweat pouring off of her forehead and down her face. After several seconds, she lay back, panting.
“Almost there,” Doctor Reynolds said. “Push again on the next contraction.”
Ken’s stomach tied itself in knots. He anticipated seeing the baby but didn’t like watching Daisy go through this. He needed it to end so the pain would go away. He tried not to watch the activity with the doctor and the nurses. Instead, he focused on his wife, on the expressions as they crossed her face, on the sounds she made.
She relaxed again and rolled her head toward him. “I’m tired.”
“I know. But you got this,” he said.
“Okay, Daisy, one more time. Ready?”
Even though she whimpered, he watched her summon the strength, then lean forward and push. He hugged her to him and willed her to get a reserve of strength from him. Suddenly, the activity at her feet picked up. The doctor moved, and Daisy collapsed back as a sharp cry filled the room.
Doctor Reynolds stood and leaned over the sheet in one move and lay the baby on Daisy’s chest. “It’s a girl!” The baby had jet black hair and pink skin. A sob clogged his throat, and he kissed Daisy’s temple.
Daisy cried and pressed her lips to the top of her head. “A girl,” she said, tears filling her eyes. She looked at him and smiled. “Little Rosita.”
They’d found a name that combined both of their mothers’ names. He touched his finger to the little wet curl on Rosita’s head. The joy Ken Dixon felt in that moment of completeness rocked him. Logic abandoned him, and pure joy poured into him and filled him until he felt it overflow. He felt like he soared above the clouds with Daisy and Rosita by his side. He felt like he flew high above the earth.
He had a home. He had a wife. He had a child. He was a husband and a father. Together, they were a family. Their family would grow closer and deeper in love from this day forward. Nothing could ever take away the complete bliss he felt in this moment.
Daisy laid her fingers lightly over his wrist as he stroked his daughter’s hair. Ken uttered the only word that seemed to fit. “Perfection,” he whispered.
“Ken?” Daisy whispered. Something about her quiet voice set off blaring alarms. Her grip on his wrist tightened to a bruising grip. “Ken? Something’s wrong,” she said with a gasp.
His eyes darted to hers. He studied her face. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. She gasped, “I… can’t… breathe.”
As he watched, Daisy’s eyes rolled up, and her head lolled back. “Daisy?” He straightened and shook her shoulder. “Daisy!”
She didn’t respond. Her hands fell from the baby and his wrist and dangled lifelessly on either side of the bed. “Doctor Reynolds! Something’s wrong!”
“Daisy?” The doctor stood up from between Daisy’s legs. “Hey, Daisy? You with me?”
One nurse scooped the baby up, and the other cut the umbilical cord with precise, efficient movements. The nurse with the baby carried her to the waiting infant bed, and the other nurse straightened Daisy’s legs and checked her pulse as she reclined the head of the bed so that Daisy lay flat. “Doctor!”
The doctor rushed to Daisy’s side, lifted her eyelids, and then used her stethoscope to listen to her chest. Doctor Reynolds made a fist and jammed her knuckles into Daisy’s breastbone, roughly rubbing up and down. Daisy didn’t move at all. In two steps, Doctor Reynolds hit a button on the wall and yelled, “We need a crash cart in here!”
From lofty, mountainous heights, Ken slammed back to earth. Every part of his body went numb with the impact. Stunned, he watched everything happen as if somehow removed from his body. Completely out of his element, he didn’t know what to think, how to react. One minute, everything was exactly perfect. The next, they guided him out of the way to put an IV in Daisy’s arm and place electrodes on her chest. He stood next to Rosita’s bed, helpless, numb, and mute.
While he observed, people ran into the room pushing a large cart with machines and equipment on it. A newly arrived male doctor shouted orders. Doctor Reynolds started CPR on Daisy as they tried to discover what happened. He heard “Clear!” and the top of Daisy’s body jerked.
For the first time in decades, Ken’s mouth filled with the sharp copper taste of fear. He scooped Rosita into his arms and stepped further into the corner, out of the way of the action. The male doctor climbed onto the bed with Daisy, straddling her, and continued to administer CPR as two nurses lifted the bed’s railings and kicked off the brakes. With efficiency, they smoothly pushed the bed out of the room. Dr. Reynolds gestured in his direction as she ran after the bed. The remaining nurse walked toward him.
“She suffered a cardiac arrest, and she’s bleeding internally. We don’t know what happened yet or why. They’re going to take her into surgery. They need to assess her condition. As soon as they figure out what happened, someone will come out to speak with you.”
She rushed out, leaving Ken standing there holding Rosita, who had been born just seven short minutes earlier. Silence descended on the room, replacing the chaos that had filled it just seconds before. Another nurse, one he hadn’t seen before, came in. “Mr. Dixon?” she asked softly.
He stared at her but didn’t respond. What was he supposed to say? Or do?
“Mr. Dixon, I need to take the baby to get her cleaned up and warm. You can come along with me if you want.”
He blinked, and then her words clicked. “I have to talk to our parents.”
He lay the baby in the tiny little bed with the plexiglass sides, and she wheeled it out of the room. In the doorway, she turned and looked at him. “You can come find me any time. We’ll be in the nursery. There’s a waiting room near the operating room. Someone can take you there when you’re ready.”
Ken exited via a different door and out into the waiting room just off their room. Daisy’s mom looked up immediately. “What did we have?”
Opening and closing his mouth, he just stared at her, unable to form words. His dad came to his side. “What’s wrong?”
“Daisy…,” his throat froze, and his dad gripped both of his shoulders with his hands. Ken’s voice sounded scratchy, hoarse. “Something was wrong.”
“What?” Rita asked, standing and putting a hand on his arm. “What happened? Is the baby okay?”
“The baby?” He blinked and looked at her, a look of incomprehension. “She’s okay.” His breath hitched, and he blinked again.
Rita’s eyes widened in panic. “Daisy?” She shook his arm and looked at the door of the waiting room as if it held all the answers. “What happened?”
His thoughts tumbled and avalanched and cycloned. What had happened? “I don’t know. They took her. I have to…” He stepped away and put his hands on the top of his head. “We have to go.”
His mom appeared at his side. “Come on, son. I know where to go.” She wrapped her arms around Ken’s arm and guided him to the doorway that led out into the hospital corridor. Over her shoulder, she said, “Phillip, call the boys.”