Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 24 - "Thirty Five" (PG)
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to do with me turning my life around.”
“Well, we’re a team, you and I. A team again.”
“Soon to be a team of three.” She takes a deep breath. “Here we are again. The eighth month.”
“Yeah. Is she moving around in there?”
“She doesn’t stop.”
“And those pains?”
“They come and go. But that’s normal.”
I kiss her, more to reassure myself then her. “We’ll keep praying that she gets here safely.”
“Way ahead of you,” she says and kisses me back.
Tuesday
I jump out of the shower. Quinn is still in bed. I guess she’ll get out when she’s ready. I open the cupboard on my side to retrieve my pants and jacket. The door almost comes off in my hand. It’s hanging on my one hinge only. I swear and Quinn rolls over and looks at me dreamily.
“Sorry,” I say. “Did I wake you?”
“With all that noise? No, of course not. What are you doing?”
“Wreaking the joint.”
“So, you’ve finally broken the cupboard doors then?”
“Almost.”
“Are you going to actually fix them this time?”
I exhale deeply. “I’ll have to now. But not right this minute. The weekend maybe.”
“Have a good day at work,” she says and rolls over, showing her back to me.
I dress, I leave her to her morning sleep in.
Wednesday
2.30am
Quinn nudges me awake. Nudges me again because I haven’t managed to fight my way out of the fog that inhabits my mind. She is groaning, sitting up, holding her middle.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, but it is a stupid question. She is far from okay.
“More contractions,” she tells me. “Worse than before.”
“Are you bleeding again?” My blood is running cold. We are here again. Eight months. Too early.
She shakes her head as another contraction takes her.
“She’s still moving,” Quinn tells me. “She’s okay. God. It’s too early.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think she’s coming.”
I go instantly into action. I help her out of bed, down the hall to the dining room. I sit her there while I grab the bag that we had prepared a month ago.
“She coming too soon,” Quinn says with a slight quake in her voice.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Try and stay calm,” I say. “Wait until we get to the hospital and get you checked out before we start to worry.”
She nods but I can see that my words have little effect, little power. Even on myself.
It’s three in the morning at the streets are nearly empty. We get to the hospital in twenty minutes. Quinn cries out several times along the way as the contractions grip her body. They’re not coming regularly though, and this is a little comforting.
I pull up in the emergency entrance and run into the waiting room, demand a wheelchair. A nurse follows me out and the two of us help Quinn out. In a moment she’s gone and I’m left to park the car and run back to emergency.
They’ve taken her to the labour ward and I’m given directions. When I get there she is on a bed and a midwife is feeling her abdomen, another is preparing the machine to monitor her contractions.
I’ve been in this scene before. Thomas was gone. Quinn was induced. She suffered through waves and waves of pain until she delivered his lifeless body. We held him for what seemed like only seconds and he was gone and the start of the darkest period of our lives began. In a way that darkness has only lifted five months ago.
“She’s engaged,” the midwife informs us.
“That means she’s ready to come.” I say nervously. “That means she’s on the way. She’s got another month.”
“All it means is that your baby is in position. She might not be coming. Let’s just see what happens.”
“You’re not going to do anything?” I ask them sharply.
“Not at the moment.” She places a hand on my shoulder, on Quinn’s as well. “We don’t need to do anything right now except for keep an eye on things. Both of you try and relax.”
Quinn cries out and grabs her belly. The machine records another contraction. She squeezes my hand until it turns white.
6.12am
The doctor comes, introduces himself and looks over the machine still strapped to Quinn’s belly.
The contractions had subsided a hour ago and we both managed a little sleep before the lights were rudely switched on above us.
“I think these were Braxton-Hicks contractions,” the doctor tells us.
“So not labour?” I ask him.
“Not labour.”
“But they felt very strong,” Quinn says, “stronger than I’m used to.”
“They can be. And they were irregularly spaced, so I think we’re looking at Braxton-Hicks. You want to go home?”
“Yes, please,” Quinn says, her voice heavily and I nod agreement.
Thursday
I feel like a bit of a fool at classes this week, but Quinn doesn’t seem to share that feeling. She freely tells everyone of our early morning visit the day before. It turns out that we’ve been in good company. Lots of first time parents have made the dash to the labour room only to be told the same thing we’ve been told.
Rachel stays put, but continues to kick her mother. Quinn laughs and says that she is all bruised inside by her daughter’s antics. The nurse tells us that she could have come a month early anyway without their being much of a problem.
I guess I feel a little more ready now. We’ve had our practice run. We’ve done the mad dash to the hospital. We’ve done our worrying. Maybe, when Rachel does come, we’ll be a little better at it. But somehow I don’t think so.
Friday
Quinn doesn’t want to go out tonight. She’s still tired after Wednesday’s early start. I order in and rent a movie and we sit on the lounge. She lies against me again, like she did all those months ago when our marriage was just in the early stages of its rebirth. I loved her then but I was still unsure. Now I know where I am and where I want to be. Now I know who I want to be with.
Later we make love, and after we lay there, with me still iholding her between her belly and her breasts, with my lips slowly running over the skin on her shoulder and neck.
She was tired when we slowly pulled our clothes off and I was surprised that she wanted to have sex. I wasn’t arguing. I certainly wasn’t saying no. I was just surprised.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I just get the feeling we won’t have many opportunities before Rachel comes along. And our trip to the hospital on Wednesday morning has kind of reminded me that she’ll be along any time. We should take opportunities when they come.”
“You’re right,” I tell her.
She rolls over. We are face to face.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
“For loving me when I didn’t deserve love, even from myself. But you saw the real me inside and you loved me despite all the horrible things I did to you.”
“It turns out that you’re not that hard to love, my girl. It turns out that I can’t help but love you anyway. You have me completely and there’s no where else I’d rather be than here, with you, right now.”
She leans forward and kisses me, softly, lovingly. Of all the kisses that she gives, this is my favourite. This tells me the truth of her love. I’d missed those kisses for a long time, and I had been so ignorant of her that I didn’t realise that they were gone and given to another. But they are mine now, never to leave, never to be given away.
Saturday
The severe Braxton-Hicks contractions return. We count the minutes between them expectantly, but they remain chaotic and soon pass. Quinn gets tired now, more than usual. I worry about her, about Rachel. I worry about her blood pressure. I worry about the pains. I worry about Rachel joining Thomas. I worry about Quinn bleeding again.
I worry about everything.
I stay close. It turns out too close. I’m crowding her but I can’t help it. She calls Jen and organises to go over to her apartment tomorrow. I want to drive her but she’s feeling that she’s losing her independence. I want to say that there was a time when she didn’t need me and that was our old life, but I don’t. I don’t want to bring up old hurts.
Sunday
Quinn leaves for Jen’s, leaving me alone and listless at home. She drives herself, she again rejects my offer to take her. She doesn’t want to feel like a burden to me, but she’s not. It’s an honour to care for her, an honour that I almost missed out on. I’m trying to enjoy the small things that might have been taken from me, trying to live in the moments that I might not have shared with her.
I grab my toolbox that I had inherited from my father. I’m not a handyman. I know what a hammer is, what a screwdriver is. I even know what to do with them. I just get them out very often.
The wardrobe doors hang there barely attached. They’re taunting me but I won’t be defeated by them. I take a screwdriver to them, trying and loosen the screws that hold the doors to the frame. There is not enough room. I’m going to have to clear some space.
Quinn loves her shoes. She can’t resist a new, stylish pair, doubly so if they’re on sale. This was one of the sources of contention between us in the past, just one of those little wedges that drove us apart slowly and surely. She would spend and I would have to balance the credit account again. The money never quite finds its way back in there, and an argument would ensure. I’d say things, she’d say things, we’d be cold with each other for a day or two and things would go back to the way they were. The troupes would fall back behind their lines