I handed the tiara to Noelle. “Why don’t you stop being a professional second banana and promote yourself? If you weren’t so scared of failing, you could take over this school and probably this entire state in about a month.”
She squeezed the fake platinum. “What if I decide to do it and crush you and all your little friends?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think you will, but if that’s what you feel, go for it. Tris, will you take care of Snickers for a few hours?”
He nodded. I headed toward the stairs.
“But the condo!” Hannah called. “People will trash it!”
“Call the police if it gets scary,” I said, starting to jog. “I have to leave. I have to find Grady.”
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I turned and looked up to wave. Tris and Elliott and Hannah waved back at me. Noelle was already inside.
Monday, July 9
As I walked to the bike rack, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I was positive the missed call and texts were from Grady. They had to be, when I’d been thinking about him so hard, when I’d had this revelation. He must have sensed me through the ether somehow. But it wasn’t Grady trying to get in touch with me. It was Miss Murphy.
Have you heard from your dad?
Call me when you get this
Immediately I wondered if my dad was dead. And still, for more than a second, I considered turning my phone off and pretending I’d never seen the messages. All I wanted was to ride over to Grady’s house as fast as I could and beg him to forgive me. Then I pulled myself together and called Miss Murphy. That’s when the really wild part started.
Tuesday, July 10
She picked up right away. “Is Dad OK?” I said. She didn’t respond. All I could hear was a whooshing noise, like she’d left her phone out in a windstorm.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hang on,” she said in a tight, odd tone. It sounded like she was barely forcing air over her vocal cords.
“What’s happening?” I said. Now I was picturing Dad lying murdered in the living room and Miss Murphy upstairs being slowly strangled by intruders (who were for some reason allowing her to answer her phone). I waited and waited and finally she said, in her normal voice, “I think I’m in labor.”
“Oh my God. Where’s Dad?”
“In New Orleans. I can’t get in touch with him.”
“Why is he in New Orleans?? Wait, who cares. Call 911!”
“Labor is not an emergency. Or so all the books claim.”
“What does your doctor say?”
“I talked to her a while ago, and she said to come in when the contractions get closer together.”
“Hang on. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Stay where you are. Oh God. Here comes another one. No, no, no, no!” I wedged my phone between my ear and shoulder and listened to her panting and squealing while I unlocked my bike. Then I paused to think for what felt like half an hour but was probably only a few seconds. Was there any way to get my hands on a car quickly? I could run upstairs and try to find someone sober. Fat chance, and even if there was one person who wasn’t drinking and had her own car, it would take me precious minutes to track her down. Should I call someone’s mom to come get me? No, that would take forever. Even the thought of wasting 30 seconds explaining what was going on to a confused mother was agonizing. Could I somehow STEAL a car? Ridiculous. The baby would arrive by the time I’d YouTubed my way into understanding hot-wiring. What if I called one of Miss Murphy’s friends and asked her to meet me at the house? I wasn’t positive Miss Murphy had any good friends in our town, and even if she did, what was I going to do, ask her to scroll through her phone and share a contact with me via text? Maybe there was a sensible course of action to take, but I couldn’t think of one. I threw my leg over my bike. But wait, I wasn’t wearing a helmet. Instead, I was wearing a bikini top, cutoffs, and cowboy boots. Oh well! There was no time to worry about my embarrassing outfit.
“I’m hanging up,” I said into the phone. “See you in a few minutes.” Miss Murphy was still wheezing and saying “No” sporadically when I ended the call.
The streets were empty and still. There was no breeze. I rode as hard as I could. Five minutes in, I was covered in sweat. My feet kept slipping off the pedals because of my stupid cowboy boots, but I figured out a way to keep them on by pushing with the middle of my foot, not the toe. I wanted to be back at Dad’s house so urgently, it felt like I could transport myself there instantly by wishing to do it, and so why in the world was I still on this bike, panting along in the dark?
When I arrived and went inside, the house was dark and quiet. “Miss Murphy?” I called. Had she gone to the hospital after all? My heart lifted. Maybe I was off the hook! Then I heard a noise, a moan, coming from upstairs. I started running, and even as I ran, I thought, I can’t do this, I don’t know how to do this, I don’t want to be here. It was like a reverse horror movie: I was breaking into a house, but I was the scared one who didn’t want to find what I was looking for. There were no lights on upstairs. I decided to check in Dad’s room first. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and fumbled to turn on the lamp on the bedside table, and there she was.
She was wearing a T-shirt and undies and sitting next to the bed on her green exercise ball, leaning forward with her arms up on the mattress and her forehead resting on her crossed wrists. She was holding her breath and then letting it out while she said, “No, no, no!”
I was so scared, seeing her there, hearing the fear in her voice. I decided I had to find a handy adult who would know what to do. I was trying to think of someone who lived close by and wouldn’t mind getting out of bed to come help me when suddenly Miss Murphy lifted her head and turned to look at me.
“Hi, Chloe,” she said. It was frightening, how normal her voice was. How could that be, when she’d sounded like a dying animal two seconds earlier?
“Did the labor stop?” I said.
“No. You get breaks between the contractions.”
“OK. OK, OK, OK. I think you need to get dressed. Stand up and I’ll help you.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I might start to contract again.”
I wasn’t sure what would be so bad about that. I decided to be brisk and cheerful, like Bear’s babysitter is with him. “Well, then you’ll contract again. Come on!” I kind of hauled her up by her armpits and tried to get her into sweatpants, but she said God no, she was so hot, so I found a pair of soft shorts. Her prediction was correct: she had a contraction mid-change, with one leg in the shorts and one leg out. I waited while she shrieked and said “no, no, no.” Then I got her other leg in. I grabbed a random shirt out of her drawer and threw it on over my bikini top. When I turned around, she was back on the exercise ball. I said, “Miss Murphy, it’s time to go to the hospital now.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Well, you’re not going to have the baby here!”
“I just can’t,” she said. “I can’t move. I can’t walk downstairs.”
“I’ll help you,” I said.
“No,” she said, and I wavered. What was I going to do, physically force her to leave the house? Maybe she was right—maybe this wasn’t actually labor, or she was days away from giving birth and the doctors would laugh at us if we went to the hospital.
I could tell from the look on her face that another contraction was starting. I kneeled down next to her and held my hands out. She ignored the left one but squeezed the right one like she was trying to crack my bones. “You’ve got it,” I said. “Good job. You’ve got it, you’ve got it. You’re doing it.” I couldn’t tell if I was helping, but I kept babbling. She started panting. “Keep breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth.” That one I got from a movie, I think, and to my shock, it seemed to do something. She stopped panting and started breathing more evenly. “You’re more than halfway done with this one,” I said, now just making stuff up. “You’re on the downhill. You’re coasting.
You’ve got it.”
After it ended, she opened her eyes and looked at me, waiting to see what I’d say next. There was no adult around, and I couldn’t figure out how to break eye contact with her for long enough to call one. My choices were to get her to the hospital, call 911 (but she’d said this wasn’t an emergency—what if the EMTs came and refused to put her in the ambulance?), or deliver a baby alone in a dark house and hope no one died. Make a decision and stick to it, I told myself.
“We’re going to walk downstairs now,” I said. “Come on.”
I thought I might have to drag her, but she got up and walked with me. She had a contraction in the hall and another one, a bad one, on the stairs. She hung on to the handrail to wait it out. In the kitchen I pulled a reusable shopping bag out of the drawer and threw in her wallet and keys. Then I had to run back upstairs for her phone. I took the steps two and three at a time. It was worse being out of Miss Murphy’s sight. For one thing, I was worried about her. For another thing, it gave me time to think about how scared I was.
Her phone started ringing right as I reached it. Dad. I swiped right.
“I’m so sorry—” he said, and I cut him off.
“It’s me. Miss Murphy’s in labor. Where’s she delivering?”
“Wait, what? Hang on—”
I could have screamed. I wanted to extract the address from him instantly, without having to listen to a single extra word come out of his mouth. He seemed irrelevant and not completely real. Miss Murphy was the real one. She was downstairs, wracked with pain. I couldn’t sit around chatting with a disembodied voice while she waited for me.
“Dad, she’s OK. I can’t talk. Please, please tell me the name of her hospital.”
He told me, and I said, “Thanks. Meet us there when you can,” and hung up on him. He called again instantly. I silenced the phone and put it in my back pocket.
I leaped down the stairs and ran to the kitchen, where Miss Murphy was having a contraction, leaning over the island, saying “no, no, no.” I called encouraging things to her while I looked for her shoes. “You’ve got it. Keep breathing,” etc. The contraction ended, and she said, “I like the island. I’m going to stay near the island for a while.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and bent down to guide her giant feet into her flip-flops. “We’re leaving now. Quick, before another one comes.”
But it’s not like you can stop them from coming. Getting her down the two steps to the garage took about 15 minutes. There was nowhere she could lean, and nothing she could grab, so she hugged me, dragging me forward. I held her up, staggering a little, while she screamed into my neck. We got into the Jeep, and I buckled her in. I decided now would be a good time to call her doctor, which I did while squeezing Miss Murphy’s hand as she contracted. The doctor sounded calm. She asked me how far apart the contractions were and how long they were lasting. I said I wasn’t sure. “You haven’t been tracking them?” she said. I wanted to scream, “I’M A KID!” but instead I said, “I think every five minutes.” She said, “She should labor at home until they’re three minutes apart and have been for an hour.” I glanced at Miss Murphy. She looked like Snickers does when he knows he’s about to get a shot. “Three minutes apart,” I said. “That’s what I meant to say. We’re driving in now.” I hung up and typed the hospital address into my phone.
Miss Murphy said, “Chloe . . . ,” and I thought for sure she was going to say, “You’re a terrible driver. I don’t trust you to do this.” But instead she said, “You know that stuff you were saying about coasting earlier? That helped.”
So as we drove, every time she had a contraction, I talked about coasting. When one started, I’d say, “You’re on your bike. You’re riding up a really steep hill. It’s hard. It hurts. But you’re doing it. You’re still going. Keep working! Work! Work! Breathe! You’re almost at the top of the hill!” When I thought she was about halfway done, I’d say, “You’re through the worst part. Now you’re coasting. You’re going downhill. Your legs still hurt, but it’s better. You did it. Keep going. Keep breathing.” I felt like a SoulCycle instructor shouting out motivational slogans, and it was embarrassing, but who cared? It was helping Miss Murphy.
I was driving with my left hand so my right hand was free for her to mash to a pulp. I was braking and accelerating while wearing cowboy boots. I was going 80 miles an hour on Route 2. I was in the city, trying to follow street signs that announced an exit two feet before the exit appeared. I was parking across the street from the hospital entrance in a spot I was pretty sure was illegal. I was petrified the entire time, but what choice did I have? I had to do it, so I did it.
I thought that as soon as I got Miss Murphy into the hospital, someone would rush over to us with a wheelchair, tell me to sit down in the lobby, and whisk her away. What actually happened was I yelled, “She’s in labor!” and a bored security guard called, “Take the elevator to the fourth floor,” and pointed back over his shoulder. We had to make it the entire way ourselves! It’s not like walking through a lobby, getting on an elevator, and following signs to the labor and delivery unit would normally be challenging, but when you’re dragging a huge shrieking woman with you and pausing every four minutes for her to have an agonizing contraction, you might as well be scaling Mount Everest. As we inched along, I looked ahead for anything she could lean on when the next contraction came. We found a gurney in a hallway—that was good. But mostly she had to hang on to me.
Even when we got to labor and delivery, no one seemed that interested in us, especially once they heard this was Miss Murphy’s first baby. I checked her in while she leaned over the nurses’ station counter and screamed. Wasn’t anyone going to help me? Were they really going to chat with each other about traffic on the Sagamore Bridge when a clueless teenager was squinting at an insurance card and trying to figure out which one was the group number and which one was the ID number, all the while feeling terrible for filling out paperwork while this poor woman suffered beside her? Yes, they really were going to chat with each other about the Sagamore, and then they were going to tsk-tsk about the opioid epidemic on the Cape. Talk about drug deaths later! I wanted to yell. Miss Murphy is dying right before your eyes! But I kept quiet and focused on the forms.
Nothing was like I thought it would be. I didn’t see a single doctor around. We didn’t get a room right away. No one said, “Where’s the father?” or “Who drove her here?” or “Exactly who do you think you are, young lady?” We were sent to a place called triage, which turned out to be a rectangular room filled with moaning pregnant women on beds separated by flimsy curtains. A nurse came in and asked Miss Murphy a bunch of questions, which she couldn’t answer because she was contracting. As soon as her contraction stopped, she asked when she could get an epidural. The nurse said “The first step is to get the fetal monitor on” in an irritated way and then said she’d be right back. Ten minutes went by.
“I hate this bed,” Miss Murphy said during a break. “I can’t lie here for one second longer.” She was actually trying to get up when another contraction started. They seemed to be coming closer and closer together. I was an expert at this point—I knew how her breathing would change, how her head would dip down, how the second half was different from the first half. So when she started grunting, I noticed.
“What are you doing?” I said. Naturally, she didn’t answer. It was dumb of me to have asked her a question. By this time I’d figured out that she couldn’t carry on a conversation while she was contracting. Besides, I didn’t have to ask. I knew exactly what she was doing. I ran out of triage and back to the nurses’ station.
“Excuse me,” I said to the nearest nurse. “My stepmother is pushing.”
That got their attention. Two nurses ran back with me. A doctor appeared out of nowhere. They helped Miss Murphy onto a gurney and wheeled her into a room fast, then transferred her to her new bed. No one told me I couldn’t come, so I stayed right with her, letting her squeeze my hand, which was act
ually bruised by this point.
“This is your daughter?” the doctor asked Miss Murphy. Miss Murphy looked at me, and I said, “More or less.” The doctor smiled at me. She was young, maybe Miss Murphy’s age, with locks pulled into a bun and a diamond on a thin gold chain sitting between her collarbones.
“Chloe,” I said, pointing to myself.
“Dr. Darbonne. Chloe, you’re in charge of Mom’s left foot,” she said. “You hold her heel and let her push against you, OK? Like Nurse Green is doing on the right.”
Miss Murphy looked up at Dr. Darbonne and said, “The epidural?” and Dr. Darbonne said, “We missed the window, but you’re almost there.”
Then Miss Murphy looked at me and said, “He’s not going to get here in time.”
I considered saying something optimistic, but then I just said, “I know.”
Another contraction came. Nurse Green said, “Breathe in for the count of five. One, two, three, four, five. Now exhale and push! More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more!”
It took about an hour. After 30 minutes, the top of the head appeared and I screamed, “I SEE HAIR!” and everyone laughed except Miss Murphy, who burst into tears.
“You can reach down and touch it, Mom,” Dr. Darbonne said, and she did.
I was seeing Miss Murphy’s entire nether region, I was seeing a human head emerge from her vagina, I was seeing blood and something whitish, but none of it grossed me out even a little bit. I was electrified with the shock of it. Women make new people inside themselves and then push those new people into the world! I’d always known it, but now I KNEW it, and I couldn’t believe the magic of it. Guys pulled off the biggest con in human history when they made God a man. Of course God isn’t a man! If God exists at all, she’s a woman. Miss Murphy was a god and so was every other woman who’d had a baby.
Notes from a Former Virgin Page 26