by Piper Lennox
“I screamed.” She says this through gritted teeth when another contraction spikes. They gave her an epidural a few hours after the Pitocin began, but I’m not sure it took. Her grip on my other hand feels like it’s crushing my bones to dust.
“Then scream,” I joke. “I’m sure the Labor & Delivery ward has heard worse.”
As soon as the spike of pain is over, she collapses against her pillows. By my count, there’s about two minutes before the next will hit.
“Are you sure you want to be in here?” the assisting nurse asks me again, pointedly dragging her eyes around the small circle of my stomach. When I arrived, she said she’d seen people faint during births who had never fainted in their lives.
“Oh...well, I’m not squeamish or anything,” I had told her. “Blood doesn’t bother me.”
“It’s different during births,” she said cryptically. “Just do me a favor and keep a chair close by, all right? You never know when you’ll need it.”
Now, I’m grateful for the advice. My legs are woozy, even though nothing’s happened yet. I sit.
“Yeah,” I tell the nurse. “I’m sure.”
It’s funny how everything in a birthing room relies on time: how many minutes between contractions; how many seconds each push should last; how long until the doctor arrives; how much longer you have to wait until an epidural, if you haven’t missed the window altogether. How many weeks gestation. How much longer until Lionel arrives. How long a baby’s heartbeat can speed up or grow quiet before you should worry.
Time matters so much right now, but feels like it no longer exists. When I check my watch and see that it’s midnight, I don’t believe it. It feels like I just got here, speed-walking through the halls until I found Viola at the vending machines. It feels like days since I’ve taken Abby’s hand.
The doctor pulls a stool up to the foot of the bed. The stirrups clatter.
“All right, Abigail,” he announces, “time to push.”
She lets loose another chant of curse words.
“Let’s have these babies, ladies.” The nurse takes her other hand and gives her a wink which, oddly, calms her down.
Abby sits up with each push, grimacing but silent through it all. I actually miss the cursing. At least I didn’t have to hear the beep of monitors and that pained exhale when the contractions end. It’s like seeing into the future, maybe even about more than the birth itself: it’s possible I could be in the same situation as Abby, the father nowhere near the hospital, clutching my sister’s hand through the peaks and swearing in the trenches.
But Lionel, at least, is on his way. When she goes home, he’ll be beside her.
Abby curses again: another contraction.
Without thinking, I hover out of my seat. Ready to jump into action, even if I have no idea what that action is. Call it instinctive.
“You should sit back down,” the nurse tells me. Her voice is sweet, but the eyes are laser-focused. This is a command.
I’m about to tell her I’m fine when the vertigo sets in. As I sit on the edge of my seat, still holding Abby’s hand, the coppery scent of the air doubles. Blood. It makes me think of the lingonberry wine in the car.
“Close your eyes.”
I do. My sister’s sweat-drenched grip is the only thing grounding me in this moment.
“One more push ought to get the head out,” the doctor reports. “Do it as hard as you can and don’t stop until I say so, Abigail. And let us know if you feel dizzy—we’ll get you lying down again.”
“Okay,” she breathes. When I open my eyes, I see that hers are shut. She looks terrified.
“You can do this, Abby.” I sit forward and ignore the head rush, focused only on her. “One more.”
“Yeah,” she pants, “but then there’s a whole other baby.”
I guess it’s because I’m missing Cohen, but I decide now would be the perfect time for a joke. Even if it’s just a little in bad taste.
“The first one will loosen everything up. I bet that second kid comes flying out like a log flume.”
The nurse suppresses her laugh, but not Abby. Boisterous, full in the chest—it rings through the room like the echo after a firework, sticking with you long after it’s over.
“All right: push,” the doctor orders, and the nurse and I repeat it: push, push, push. I stare at the monitors and take a weird comfort in the fact that some unpleasant things in life can be predicted. Like the pangs that wrack you to your core when you bring a child into the world, evenly spaced and always the same.
But there are some things you just can’t prepare for, no matter how much you watch and worry—like when the pangs will start. If the man you love will be there to help you. If something will go wrong.
And it’s the times like those, I guess, when you have to believe in the best. That life will still go right in all its wrong ways.
Not that I delve into this too consciously at the moment. More than anything, I’m aware of Abby’s hold weakening, her body going slack against the pillows, and, a few seconds later, that tiny, squalling, beautiful cry.
It’s not at all like an echo—more like the trill certain shells make during launch: the sound of something big beginning. Not the end.
“Welcome to Hotel Cohen. Wake-up call is at noon, sharp.”
Levi nods his thanks while I drape a bed sheet over the sofa. It only seats two, so his legs will be dangling over the armrest, but he flops down with a grateful kind of sigh.
“I’ll get a real hotel tomorrow,” he promises, but I shrug it off.
“Stay here as long as you want, man. I don’t mind. I mean, you might, but you’re welcome here for...ever.”
He laughs, half-yawning. “Definitely won’t be forever. Whatever happens with me and Linds, I’m getting back in my house at some point. That’s for damn sure.”
I cut the lights but leave the television on for him. He’s always slept with a show running in the background, cut low, since we were kids. It drove me crazy; I prefer things dark, cool, and silent. Tonight, though, I make the exception.
“Is this the quilt Mom and Beatrix made?”
The Murphy bed groans at me, halfway unfolded from the wall, as I prop it on my leg and look. I gave him the only extra blanket I’ve got: a Frankenstein quilt crafted from our outgrown T-shirts and Alvin’s old linen pants. It’s ugly as sin, but incredibly soft—just the right amount of broken-in.
“The very same. I still remember the summer they made it.”
“Yeah,” he nods, looking at a corner in the television’s blue glow, “she and Mom sat in the garden with that big basket of fabric scraps basically every night.”
“Then we’d get home from climbing trees and literally rolling in mud,” I add, and lock the bed down into place. “Trix would clean us up with some of her sweet tea and the reject scraps.” That’s the part I remember most vividly, in fact: the ice-cold tea scrubbing my skin, the sugar immediately attracting mosquitoes, and Beatrix’s smile when she’d brush my hair off my forehead, just like Mom always did, and sing, “There’s that handsome face! Knew it was in there, somewhere.”
“Kind of miss the Freak Farm,” Levi mutters. He massages his temples before pulling the quilt around his shoulders and shutting his eyes. “Night, Co. And thank you, for everything.”
“Anytime.”
My phone buzzes after Levi’s already conked out, which doesn’t take long. I step into the bathroom to answer; it’s got to be Mr. Wallman, demanding his refund straight from the source. Now that my brother’s situation has stabilized, I can catalog the events of tonight and take stock. Right up until the end, things were perfect—but the end was an unmitigated (or barely mitigated) disaster. And some things in life, like parties? How they end is really all that matters.
Word will spread. The Venn diagram of people the Wallmans know and ones my Uncle Tim and Aunt Jeannie know is practically one circle. After tomorrow, Fairfield Party Suppliers might be history.
So
I take a breath as I flip the phone over, finger poised to swipe and accept whatever fate is about to hurl my way.
It’s Paul.
“Cohen?” His voice bounces around the tile.
“Yes,” I answer quickly, forgetting to whisper. Juliet gave my number to her family at the baseball game, in case of emergencies. It’s possible Paul is just calling to chat, clueless to the breakup. But given the fact it’s after midnight, even I can’t cling to optimism.
Something’s wrong. My heart thumps against my chest.
And when he says, “Don’t panic, but they’ve admitted Julie to the hospital,” it thunders.
29
“We’re not hearing the heartbeat. Which doesn’t mean anything bad, don’t worry—the baby’s probably turned a funny way.”
I don’t believe them. The nurse with the Doppler wand on my stomach, the doctor who poked and prodded me when they wheeled me out of Abby’s room, right after she delivered the second baby.
The umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck. We didn’t hear a cry.
A pang hit my stomach. My skin itched from the inside out, I suddenly felt so hot.
I slouched against Abby’s bed just as she sat back on her pillows and cried, laughing through the tears.
“Jules?” She shook me, like I’d fallen unconscious.
“I’m fine,” I swore, until the second I was out in the hallway, when another pang hit. I imagined the baby again and its bluish white skin, the cord they snipped before Abby even saw, and warned the blurred shapes in front of me I was going to be sick.
Now, in a room that feels like it’s miles from Abby’s, I cringe through another wave as the nurse clicks off the Doppler. The air is clean here, smelling of sterilized cotton instead of dried blood and sweat and a body working itself to the brink. I should be taking deep lungfuls of it, clearing my chest, but I can’t. Not hearing the heartbeat.
“We’ll do an ultrasound,” she says. “Try to stay calm, honey, all right? You were under a lot of stress back there. Good news, though: the spotting looks like it’s stopped.”
Numbly, I nod as she stands and types something into the laptop they rolled into the exam room.
“Any questions I can help with?”
I have a hundred. How are Abby’s babies? The first was a boy, I remember that—but what was the second? Has she named them?
What happened to Baby B, when the cord was cut and the room stayed silent?
Then my head fills with questions about my own baby: am I in labor? Is the baby all right? Am I?
If you can’t hear a sound—a cry, a heartbeat—does that mean it isn’t there?
“No,” I say softly. I need them answered. I’m just not sure I can handle it if the answers don’t fall cleanly into Optimism.
“Juliet?”
The nurse and I look up. Cohen appears from behind the door, panting, sweat on his forehead.
As soon as he slips his arms around me, I break.
“Shh, it’s okay.” His palm smooths my hair, and he pulls my ear against his chest. His heartbeat’s running wild, a complete contradiction to the easy, low lilt of his voice as he tells me, over and over, things are okay.
It’s only when the ultrasound begins that I get the chance to read his face. He chews his thumbnail until the screen fills with a mess of gray and black, then closes my hand up in both of his. He presses his mouth there. One small, waiting kiss.
His breathing isn’t like what I’ve missed the last few nights, smooth and cool on the top of my head. It’s choppy, humid as the midsummer air streaking the window. For once, his entire body holds still.
“Let’s see,” the tech says, while I shut my eyes and pray, Let’s hear.
Cohen’s hands squeeze mine tighter, the longer the tech searches. I feel his watchband. His pulse.
I feel the burst of water, one drop, on my fingers.
When I open my eyes, I see that single teartrack along his nose, bright silver in the fluorescent lights.
Then we hear it.
It’s not a squalling launch or swelling echo. It’s the low roll of an entire switchboard erupting in the sky, one after the other, steady and distant but right there, when you know to listen.
Cohen gives a laugh, swallowing the rest of his tears. I’m about to tell him I’m glad he’s here, however the news reached him. No matter what happens next.
But before I can even take a breath, he drops my hand, holds my face in his, and kisses me.
“I missed you so much,” she whispers as I pull back. “And—and I’m sorry, for the fight and—”
“It’s okay. You had some...valid points.” I scratch my head and shrug; with the ultrasound tech still beside us, snapping screenshots on the monitor, I’m not eager to get into the details. I don’t want to get into them at all, tonight. All I want to focus on is the positive: the tiny, powerful heartbeat still beating through the room.
Maybe it proves Juliet even more right, the fact I want to sweep it all aside right now. But I can live with that.
“Do you two know the baby’s sex yet?”
“Not yet. My doctor’s doing the ultrasound next week.”
“Well...would you like to know now?” The tech smiles as she spins her stool to us. “I can tell you. Unless you want to keep it a surprise.”
Juliet and I look at each other. “I think...I think we want to know now,” she answers.
The tech brings up a screenshot and zooms in, drawing an arrow with her mouse to point out something neither of us—judging by the look on Juliet’s face, anyway—can decipher.
“You,” she says, looking back at us, “are having a girl. Congratulations.”
“Oh, my God,” Juliet laughs, as she covers her mouth with both hands and looks at me. My face aches; I can’t stop smiling.
After the tech leaves, I sit on the bed and trace the low rise of her stomach under the gown. “A girl,” I repeat. “Maybe she’ll have a couple sisters, one of these days.”
“Or a brother,” Juliet adds.
“One of each.” I spread my hands across her stomach and thank God the baby, our daughter, is all right. “Guess we’re going with Lucy, then.”
Juliet nods, but then stares at her stomach and makes a face. “I don’t know. That doesn’t feel like her name.”
I can’t help but laugh. “She’s not even born, yet.”
“I know.” She nudges me with her foot. “But still—it doesn’t seem like...her.” Her brow furrows as she tries to explain, but can’t.
“We have time,” I remind her, even though, after tonight, I’m starting to realize that isn’t true. Even when you have days, weeks, months stretching ahead, you can’t rely on that number. You don’t know what’ll happen. If time will get cut short, or just fly by.
“I saw the boys,” I tell her. “On my way to your room. Your family was at the NICU.”
She sits up. “Are they okay? How’s Abby doing—did Lionel get here yet?”
“Everyone’s here and everyone’s great,” I smile, making her lie back. “Abby’s blood pressure is back to normal. Baby A is...Mason Paul, I think, and Baby B is James Robert.”
“Do you think they’ll let me get up and see them?”
“Let’s wait a few more minutes. You still look pale.”
“So did you, a little while ago.”
“Yeah, well. I pretty much had a heart attack during the drive here. It’s a miracle Levi’s truck isn’t in some ditch, I was driving so fast.” My head hurts, remembering everything with him and Lindsay in one sudden blast, but I push through. I’ll tell Juliet the details soon. Not tonight.
“When you do see the boys,” I add carefully, “don’t freak out—they’ve got little oxygen tubes and heart rate monitors on, but they’re totally fine. James was trying to pull everything off, in fact.”
She laughs. “Abigail’s son, that’s for sure.” She looks at her hands, resting on her stomach beside mine. “He came out blue, with...with the cord around h
is neck. That’s what put me over the edge, I guess. I was already stressing out, just being there, but seeing that….” Water beads on her lashes again. “It was terrifying.”
“Another classic Brooks Sisters example of Favors Not to Ask: having your pregnant sister attend your delivery.”
“I could have said no,” she says, defensive. “I just...didn’t. But not because I felt obligated, or even because I wanted to make Abigail happy. It was one of those things you do without really thinking, because….”
I picture Levi, hurling into the bushes outside the Acre. Doubled over and crying on his tailgate. Pitching rock after rock into the darkness, or laughing so loud it echoed down the street, when I set the cat in his lap through the window.
“Because they’re family,” I finish, and Juliet nods.
“Exactly.”
30
After many long goodbyes to her family and a sheaf of papers releasing her, we walk through the miniaturized streets of the medical complex and look up at the sky. It’s almost dawn, one splash of pink creeping over the horizon.
“I’m exhausted,” she sighs, leaning into me.
“I’ll drive you home. Then I’ll just get a ride-share back here to get Levi’s truck.”
“You could stay until morning, if you want.” Her eye-roll’s so adorable, I kick myself for not calling sooner. I could kick myself for a lot of things. “Later in the morning, I mean.”
“I might.” The adrenaline in the hospital room was like a pause button. Now the fight plays in my head again, and I’m sure hers. It’s not quite tension, this energy between us, but it’s something. And I know now it won’t work itself out.
Her coupe creeps through the parking deck, the engine’s echo swimming through our open windows. “What’s that?” I ask, glancing at the bottle she fishes out from underneath the passenger seat.
“I almost forgot! This is yours.” She turns it. “Gift from Dad.”
I squint at the label, then laugh. “Oh, hell, yeah. Your dad’s the best.”