by Hart, Staci
“Mom, call 911,” I commanded, my voice calm and my hands brushing Sarah’s hair from her wrenched face. “Then get my phone and call Theo. Tommy and Amelia are with him. Hurry!” I snapped when she didn’t move, jolting her into action.
“Sarah,” I said with an eerie calm I didn’t feel, “you’re okay. I think you might have broken your leg.”
“Hip,” she gritted through her teeth, her eyes pinched shut. Cool sweat bloomed on her cheeks, which had paled to an alarming shade of gray.
I glanced down her body as my mind whirred through emergency procedures I’d learned in Girl Scouts. “Mom, come sit with Sarah,” I said, trading places with her, placing her free hand on Sarah’s.
Her eyes were wild, her voice trembling as she gave details to the dispatcher.
I shot to my feet, running for the linen closet. With my arms full of sheets and towels, I ran back into the living room, snagging a pair of scissors from the kitchen on my way. The sheet I cut into strips in record time, fueled by the sounds of Sarah’s pain. One strip was for her ankles, which I tied together. I passed a hand towel to my mom.
“Go wet this with cold water, please.”
She nodded, her face pale as she took it and hurried to the kitchen.
“The ambulance is on its way, Sarah,” I said, hoping to distract her. “I’m going to make a brace out of towels and tie them to you. The more stable it is, the better it will feel.”
Sparrow handed me the wrung-out, folded towel, but my hands were busy rolling up towels.
“Cool her forehead.”
She did.
I kept talking, catching her gaze and holding it. “When I was in Girl Scouts, a girl in my troop named Farrah Silver used to terrorize me at camp. Ants in my bed, stole my soap, threw my sheets in the mudbank of the river. The works.” The tear of the sheet, the flash of my hands. “Once, she replaced one of the other girl’s shampoo with Nair, and after that, she was everyone’s best friend. It was that or baldness, and no twelve-year-old girl would pick anything but asskissing under those odds.”
A flicker of a smile, tight with pain, touched Sarah’s lips.
“So, we were at camp, heading out to trail ride. We headed to the stable, and Farrah walked straight up to the biggest horse they had—Diablo. Why they had a stallion evil enough to be named after Satan at Girl Scout camp is beyond me.” I positioned the rolled-up towels from hip to knee on either side. “Our leader had ridden up ahead of us to check the trail was all right after a rainstorm. Farrah, of course, started showing off and spurred Diablo, but he barely moved other than to buck her off. I swear, she flew ten feet and hit the ground in a puff of dust.”
“That little girl was a menace,” Mom said with a shake of her head.
“I’m sure she’s either in prison or is a CEO. Anyway, everyone just stared at her while she wiggled around on the ground, yelling. Not crying. Yelling obscenities at us. And no one helped—they just laughed. Laughed! Especially Rachel, the bald one. So, I got off my horse and made a brace out of sticks and a T-shirt.”
“You gave her your shirt?” Mom asked.
“Nope. I used hers. She put ants in my bed? Well, I saved her ankle by exposing her stuffed training bra to the troop.”
She laughed.
Sirens wailed in the distance just as I took Sarah’s hand. “It’s going to be all right. I know it hurts, but it will be better soon. They’re going to have all kinds of good stuff for you, like morphine and ice packs.”
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Mom said, rushing to the door.
I expected to hear strange voices of paramedics, not my mother gasping.
“Dave! What are you doing here?”
My head snapped around so fast, I nearly got whiplash. My father sagged miserably on the stoop.
“Honey, I’ve missed you. I’ve been going crazy without you all this time. I know I haven’t loved you like I should, but I came to prove I’d cross the world for another chance. Let me make it up to you, babe. Let me love you like you deserve.”
“Oh, Dave,” she sighed, falling into his arms. “I’ve missed you, t—oh!”
The noise of the sirens rose to ear-splitting decibels just as a fire truck squealed to a stop beyond the door.
And then the commotion really began in the way of half a dozen first responders, my crazy parents, the gravely injured grandmother of my child, and a contraction so intense, I thought I might split in two from the extraordinary blinding heat of it.
And all I could do was hang on to Sarah’s hand and hope.
❖
Theo
Chaos.
The cab screeched to a stop just down the street, which was blocked by an ambulance and a fire truck.
I threw the door open and ran, leaving Tommy and Amelia behind me.
Chaos, red and frenetic, sirens and lights, strangers in uniforms with no familiar faces.
I wound through paramedics and firefighters, bolting through the open door of my house, my gaze darting across faces, looking for one I knew.
Then I found one, a pale face wrenched in pain and drenched in sweat.
“Ma,” I called, beelining for her.
Two EMTs were moving my mother onto a body board, her body so small. She reached for me.
“Teddy,” she croaked, her voice trembling and tight.
I clasped her hands. “What happened?”
“I fell, tripped on the coffee table like a clumsy old fool. Katherine took care of me.”
“Kate,” I whispered.
Her brows tightened even more. “Honey, check on her. I think she’s having contractions, but she’s too proud to admit it.”
I froze, my heart stopping for the fourth time since I’d rolled out of bed that morning.
“Go. I’m okay,” she insisted. “There’s nothing anyone can do for me that hasn’t already been done. Go make sure she’s all right.”
I kissed her forehead, trading places with Tommy before wheeling around to look for Katherine.
I caught sight of her in the kitchen, face hard as stone, pacing a rut in the floor with her mom in her wake. The closer I got, the worse my dread.
“Theo,” she breathed when she saw me, the hard facade she’d put in place cracking and crumbling. She launched herself into my arms.
“Kate.” I cupped her head, holding her to me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. God, Theo—it happened so fast. She stood and took a step, and I couldn’t catch her. I tried to get to her, but she fell and—” A noisy hiss, and her body locked, curling in on itself.
I let her go to inspect her. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She ground the word out like grain against stone.
Sparrow’s face was pinched with worry. “I think she’s in labor.”
Katherine shot her a look. “I am not in labor. I am not supposed to go into labor for three weeks. Three full weeks.”
“These things happen,” her mom assured her, placing a small hand on her back.
“Not to me they don’t—ah!” She doubled over, hanging on to my arm.
“We’re going to the hospital,” I commanded.
Katherine’s expression was petulant. “No, we are not. I am not having this baby yet. I am not in labor. It’s just stress. I need a glass of water and to lie down. That’s all.” She dragged in a breath deep enough that her nostrils almost stuck together.
“Kate—”
“I am not in labor!” she shrieked, edging hysteria without warning. “I haven’t even lost my mucus plug! I have a list, Theo. I have a list and it’s not checked off and I’m supposed to have three whole weeks. It’s not happening now. It’s not!”
I pulled her into my arms, deciding the first thing I needed to do was calm her down. “Okay. It’s not happening now.”
“Thank you,” she said miserably against my chest.
A man I’d never seen before appeared next to Sparrow with a glass of water in his hand and a
ponytail that would have made Tommy Chong green with envy.
“For Katie,” he said with a lazy smile. His glasses were tinted, but I was eighty-nine percent certain he was high. “I’m Dave. Niceta meetcha.”
I took his hand with numb detachment and pumped it once.
The bedlam swirled around us—people and sirens and my injured mother, Katherine’s mother, and her father, who’d come without warning. And in my arms was my Kate, crying and groaning and most likely about to have our baby.
There was nothing to do but get shit done.
I scooped Katherine up and carried her to the couch. Gave her a glass of water. Pulled a paramedic aside and asked her to check Katherine out.
When the EMT and I made it back to the couch, Katherine’s face was pink as she tried to sit, a task made difficult by her stretched-out abdominal muscles.
“Lie down, Kate,” I soothed, smoothing her hair.
“I…” Her face opened up like a storm shutter. “Oh no.”
I frowned. Katherine shifted. Sparrow lit up.
“Katie,” she said, “I think your water just broke.”
The look Katherine and I shared was heavy with a thousand words in the span of a heartbeat.
And I held her hands and glanced at the paramedic.
“I think we’re gonna need another ambulance.”
30
Plato Says
Katherine
“If your mom tries to light that sage one more time, I will have her permanently removed from the building,” the nurse said, eyeing my mother, who held her hands up in surrender.
“It would help. I’m just saying.”
The nurse rolled her eyes.
Commotion bustled around us as the nurses and a midwife broke down my hospital bed, converting it for delivery. I was a tangle of tubes and wires—from the IV in my arm and the epidural in my spine to the nodes stuck to my belly, monitoring my contractions, which had reached levels that my epidural could no longer mask.
Another one came, a wave of heat that slipped over my belly, tightening it against my will. I hunched forward, feeling the urge to bear down.
Push, my body said.
“Ah, ah, ah,” the nurse warned. “Hang on, Katherine—your doctor is on her way. She’s here. Just hold on a few minutes.”
Theo shot her a look. He had a hold of my hand, the leverage so solid and sure that it was almost enough to make me less afraid.
Almost.
It took everything I had to resist the urge, waiting impatiently through the contraction until it was gone. My mother was chanting something in a language that sounded Native American, shaking what looked like a maraca with turquoise and feathers dangling from the handle.
I gave Theo a look.
“Sparrow, could you get some more ice chips?” he asked.
“Sure, let me just finish this spell.”
“We could really use it now.”
She was close to pouting. “All right, but if I leave now, who knows what will happen,” she warned.
“We’ll take our chances,” he said with a smirk as she left the room, shaking her head with the little pitcher and her maraca in her hands.
I sighed, leaning back in the bed with a weary thump. “Thank you.”
He smoothed my hair from my face. “What do you need? What can I do?”
“I don’t even know. My head hurts.”
His big hand moved to my neck. “Here, let me.”
His thumb pressed into the tight muscles where my neck and shoulder joined. A noisy groan slipped out of me.
He pulled my hair out of its bun, which was hours old and probably looked like a rat’s nest. Another groan as his fingers slipped into my hair and massaged my scalp. I nearly wept at the pleasure.
Then another contraction came, and I nearly wept at that.
I curled forward, clamping his hand, putting my weight on it, which he bore without even moving. My chin pressed to my clavicle, and my eyes slammed shut. And the moment stretched out, the pain putting everything in the universe in a warp. Time didn’t exist in that space.
When it passed, I flopped back on the bed, my awareness returning in tendrils. “It hurts,” I moaned.
His face was dark with worry. “Can you turn this thing up?” he asked the nurse.
“Of course,” she said, stepping to the epidural drip to fiddle with it. “There. That should help.”
My hand darted out, snagging the nurse’s wrist. “I don’t want anyone in here but Theo.”
Her face softened, and she patted my hand. “I’ll go intercept your mom.”
“Thank you,” I said, relieved as she left.
Theo’s hands were in my hair again, gathering it up, twisting it into a fresh bun with more ease than I’d figure a man of his stature and experience would possess.
“Lean up,” he commanded, helping me to sit. He hitched a leg to half-sit so he could press his thumbs to the aching muscles low on my back.
I grabbed the empty stirrups with my hands and groaned.
He’d shucked off his coat, his tie gone. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, that button at the top undone. And his face was cool and confident as always. But his dark eyes were laden with concern.
Dr. Stout rushed in, smiling. “Looks like we’re having a baby,” she said as she approached.
“Oh, thank God. Can I push now?” I asked pitifully.
She chuckled. “I think so. Let’s see how we’re looking. Come on, feet up, Katherine.”
Theo moved out of the way so I could lie back just as another contraction came. I grabbed his hand, curling in on myself.
“Hold on, don’t push yet,” she said as she examined me. “She’s ready. Next contraction, we’re going to go for it, okay?”
“Mmhmm,” I hummed through pursed lips.
“You’re doing so good,” he murmured.
“The epidural’s not working,” I half-sobbed.
“Don’t worry,” Dr. Stout said with a comforting smile. “You’re almost there.”
“That isn’t really what I wanted to hear.”
“I promise, when your baby’s here in a few minutes, you’ll forget all about it.”
“Doubtful,” I snarked.
“Trust me, if we didn’t forget all this, we’d never have a second baby.”
I looked up at Theo, and he looked down at me.
“A few minutes,” he said. “A few more minutes, and she’ll be here.”
Tears surged out of nowhere. “I…Theo, I…I need to tell you…” The words died in my throat. It was too much all at once—the months of waiting, the depth of change, the realization of my feelings. The birth of our child. The look in his eyes. The ache of my heart.
But it was all cut short by that climbing sting of another contraction, my lungs locking.
“All right,” Dr. Stout said, nodding to the nurses.
They abandoned their tasks of readying the incubator and supplies to come to her side.
“Theo, grab her leg. Show him how, Jenny.”
Jenny wrapped her arm around the inside of my calf, offering cursory instructions as she took my hand with her free one. Theo mirrored her.
“Okay, Katherine. Push.”
I bore down, my face pinching closed, my awareness shrinking to a pinpoint of pain as I flexed my abdomen from the top and pushed, bracing against the stirrups and the arms around my legs.
“Breathe,” Dr. Stout directed, but I couldn’t, not until I’d exhausted my strength.
I sucked in a breath and did it again, lips curling and chin tucking.
“She’s got a full head of hair,” the doctor said with a smile.
“I bet it’s dark,” Theo said to me. “I bet she looks just like you.”
The contraction was over, but I couldn’t speak, didn’t lie back. My hospital gown was hitched up to the bend in my thighs, my vagina on display to the handful of people in the room, including Theo. I couldn’t even find it in me to be embarrassed
.
“Okay, here comes another one,” she said. “Ready?”
I nodded, my vision dimming. I closed my eyes against it.
I knew when to push before she said it, the hyperawareness of every muscle engaged, the sensation of my body opening up overwhelming, the panic of knowing there was a human lodged in the exit maddening. I wanted her out. I wanted her out now.
So I pushed as hard and efficiently as I could.
“I’ve got her head!”
The panic rose higher, knowing I had another push but unable to swallow the logic. “Get her out!” I wailed, wild-eyed.
“One more push,” she assured me. “Get ready.”
I swiveled to look at Theo, who wore a peaceful expression.
“She’s stuck,” I choked.
“She’s fine, Kate. She’s perfect. Come on. One more, and she’s here.”
I sobbed, shifting to get myself ready, gripping their hands with slick palms, closing my eyes as the slow burn slipped over my aching belly once more.
And then I pushed.
I felt everything, felt her leave my body, felt the instant relief and alarming emptiness. Collapsed back on the bed. Heard her cry. My cheeks were cool. His lips were warm against them. His hands were strong and trembling as he touched my face. His words were soft and soothing as he whispered to me that I’d done it.
“Dad, want to come here and cut the cord?”
Dad. They’d called him dad. He was a father.
I was a mother.
I opened my eyes, and there she was.
She was both ashen and purple, her face smushed and eyes pinched shut. Her little mouth was red, opened wide with a wail that stopped my heart. Though I knew right then that organ wasn’t mine anymore. It was hers.
Theo cut the cord with wonder in his eyes, and the nurses wiped her up, wrapped her in a blanket, and carried her over to me.
I reached for her, feeling the weight of her, the shape of her in my arms after carrying her in my body all this time. I cradled my baby to my chest, peering into her face.
And Theo leaned in, resting his hand on mine, cupped under her head.
“You did it,” he breathed. “You did it, Kate.”