One Size Fits All

by Courtney Cole

  Tara fights a smile and cocks an eyebrow at me. “Don’t stress about it. All pregnant women pee their pants when they laugh. You get a child. You get some incontinence. Hardly a fair trade if you ask me.”

  “Stop it. I’m being serious.” I wave her off, needing just a moment of space as I try to discreetly assess the damage. “Okay, I think I’m okay.”

  After a few more steps, what I thought was a little trickle of pee turns into a massive gush that is usually reserved for Hollywood rom-com flicks and overdramatic junior high sex-ed videos to scare you into abstinence.

  “Henley, that’s not pee. I think your water just broke.”

  I stand stunned and speechless in the middle of the produce aisle. “Oh … my … God …” My voice is scarily calm, but my insides are running rampant. “What do I do?”

  “Um, what do you think we do? You’re about to have a baby! We go to the hospital.” Tara abandons her cart and grabs my elbow, trying to pull me away from the scene of the crime, but I don’t budge.

  “We can’t just leave … this …” I say, gesturing to the bodily fluids I’m leaving as a parting gift at my friendly, neighborhood Costco store.

  “Um, sure we can.”

  “No, that’s gross! That’s my … my … my stuff!” My eyes dart around the area frantically looking for something, anything, to clean up this mess.

  Tara looks at me incredulously. “You’re overreacting, Henley. You’re about to have a baby, and you’re freaking out over a puddle in a bulk grocery store?”

  “But that’s my puddle. Some poor high school kid barely making minimum wage is going to get stuck slopping up my amniotic fluid with a moldy, worn out mop. I can’t just leave it here …”

  “Yes, you can. And you will.”

  I look around again, hoping for a manager; for someone to flag down and profusely apologize. When I hear the splatter of fluid against the tile, my attention diverts back to the scene of the crime only to find Tara pouring and entire container of chicken broth on the floor, mixing it together like an amniotic soup.

  “There. It’s not as bad. It looks like the carton just exploded.”

  “My God! Does this ever stop?”

  Tara grabs me by the elbow and tries to pull me toward the door. But as she does, her feet slip out from underneath her in all her cartoon-esque glory, and she lands ass first right into the mess. But she doesn’t even falter.

  “Clean up, aisle two!” my best friend booms and my face flashes crimson. I want to crawl into a hole and die.

  “Okay, on that note, we can leave this mess behind.”

  8. D-DAY … WHERE “D” CAN BE FOR DELIVERY OR DOOM OR DOWNRIGHT SCARIEST THING I’VE EVER DONE

  It would be in everyone’s best interest if every woman in labor were given a warning label to stick to her forehead upon arriving at the hospital for her significant other, or hell … even strangers, to read.

  Warning: Highly prone to spontaneous fits of delirium, irrational logic, and violent, unpredictable mood swings. This individual has been sober, swollen and hungry for the past nine months, so proceed with caution and handle with care. Anything said during the course of labor and delivery should not be taken seriously. Side effects may last up to eighteen years. Please consult your physician should castration occur. And never forget, this is all your fault.

  “Jesus Christ on a cracker! Can you get me into a room already?” I growl at the cute, blonde woman working reception as another contraction cripples my body. I thought the two hour long pre-registration seminar we did a few weeks ago was supposed to eliminate me waiting in reception.

  “Simmer down and let the poor woman do her job, Henley.”

  Blondie behind the desk shoots daggers my direction.

  Oh, shit. It’s happening again.

  I grind my teeth and shut my eyes so tightly that little stars begin to appear behind my eyelids. A primitive growl escapes my mouth, and I don’t even recognize myself in this moment. My hands reach out for something … anything … to grab onto, and in the process, my left hand assaults Tara’s boob and my right hand spills over a cup of pens effectively messing up Hospital Reception Barbie’s organization.

  “BIRTHQUAKE!” Tara proclaims at the top of her lungs and I have to remind myself to breathe.

  I attempt to hone in on my breathing.

  In with serenity.

  Out with baby bullshit.

  Because let’s be honest, contractions are complete and total bullshit.

  But focus is one thing I’ve always lacked, and before I know it, I’m unleashing a scream that is akin to the sound of the devil himself trying to claw out of my body.

  Probably because he is. Only the spawn of Satan could bring this much physical pain.

  I haven’t even met this child, and while I absolutely love him or her to bits, this kid is kind of being a little asshole. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s been grounded since the second trimester.

  When the moment finally passes, beads of sweat are streaking down my temples, and I’m gasping for air. Everyone in the waiting room is suspended, frozen in time, watching me with their mouth agape.

  I slap my hand down on the counter and my palm stings. I didn’t mean to do it, but I appreciate the theatrics of the thunderous sound. The edges of my mouth curl up maniacally and, in the sweetest voice I can muster, I say, “Now will you get me a room, or should I head out and find myself a freakin’ manger to birth this impending bundle of joy?”

  The woman pushes herself up from the desk and in one swift, glorious hair flip, whisks her tiny frame to the printer behind her, gathers my paperwork, and calls for a nurse. I’m not sure who’s more anxious for me to become someone else’s problem—me or her.

  My money’s on me.

  Within moments, a nurse magically appears in the doorway with a wheelchair, ready to usher me away into motherhood. Or at least the last long, painful stretch of life before becoming a mom.

  * * *

  “When will Jeff be here?” My tone is whiny, my body aches, and I am so over all this. If he doesn’t make it here soon, he’s going to miss the birth.

  “He should’ve been here by now.” Tara pulls her cell phone out of her back pocket and turns away to dial his number.

  If I’m being honest, I feel bad for Tara. She may be my best friend, but she doesn’t deserve the Jekyll and Hyde whiplash I’ve involuntarily been dishing out. I already told her to go home to her family, but apparently the dramas of my being in labor are the lesser of two evils when compared to triplet boys. And if motherhood is anything like childbirth, I can’t blame her.

  When she returns, she gives me a half smile. “Not too much longer. He stopped somewhere on his way here. Probably for flowers or something.”

  That kind of gesture sounds like something he’d do—come running into the hospital room with his arms overflowing with flowers and balloon bouquets and pink and blue stuffed bears. But this is hardly the time to run errands, even if they come from the best intentions.

  “So for now, you can call me Jeff, pretend that I’m the reason you’re stuck in this mess, and boss my dick around. Now, what can I get you?”

  Even if I can’t muster a laugh, I appreciate her attempt at humor and keeping my mind off of the obvious. “Food. I’d give anything for a cheeseburger right now.”

  “Oh, sweetie, you’re not allowed to eat anything.” Tara tenderly brushes a loose strand out from my eyes.

  One of the nurses strolls in with a cup of water and sets it on the side table. “Your, uh, partner is right. You can have some ice chips if you’d like.”

  Tara’s face lights up at the mere mention of ‘partner’, and she leans over and kisses my cheek. “See, honey? She says I’m right. Now when are you going to learn this little fact of life?”

  Just as I’m about to inform her that Tara is actually not my lesbian life partner, another birthquake comes rolling through. It’s hard to not focu
s on anything but the searing, white hot pain slingshotting out from my vagina from my head all the way down to my pinky toes.

  The hormones swing drastically, and instead of the post-contraction relief I was feeling earlier, I’m now overcome with emotion. The sheer thought of all the frozen food we abandoned in the cart back at Costco sends me into a weepy tailspin.

  What. The. Fuck. Pull yourself together, Henley!

  My shoulders tremble and snot streaks down my face, and I no doubt look like a goddamned raccoon whore since I’m an idiot who doesn’t wear waterproof mascara. I’m a train wreck, and there’s only one person who can remedy this situation.

  “He needs to get here soon.”

  “I’ve got tissues for your issues, girlfriend.” Tara grabs a box of Kleenex and balances it on top of my stomach. She looks over her shoulder at the empty doorway, practically willing him walk through the threshold at that exact moment.

  But he doesn’t.

  “I promise he’ll be here soon,” she adds softly as an afterthought.

  I have visions of Jeff pacing some random hallway trying to convince himself that this is what he truly wants. He’s always been so cool and collected about everything that it has to be a facade. He’s going to change his mind, and I’m going to be left abandoned. Exactly like the industrial size bag of frozen meatballs.

  “But what if he—”

  “Nope. Don’t even go there, Henley,” Tara says, effectively trying to shut down my train of thought.

  “But I don’t wanna be a soggy meatball!”

  Tara looks at me like I have four heads and laughs. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Before I can explain, the nurse checking the computer screen that monitors the baby’s heartbeat and then walks down to the end of the bed and squeezes my foot with her hand.

  “Why don’t we see how far you’ve progressed?

  “O … okay ….” I sniffle pathetically.

  She gives me her best, toothy ‘everything is gonna be all right’ grin, and without so much as buying me a drink, works her hand all the way up into my business.

  “Well, it looks like you’re at four centimeters. Which is great progress!” she says with a little too much spark in her voice.

  But all I hear is you’re only at four centimeters. It took you a few hours to get to this point, and you’re not even halfway there. And even then, when I first arrived I was already at a three. Apparently, I’m a snail because that’s the only way I can qualify four centimeters as great progress.

  “So why don’t you try to relax? First time moms tend to have a longer labor.”

  The nurse is out the door before I can ask her when I can get an epidural because, frankly, these contractions are overrated. Mine have been nothing but inconsistent and a great big pain in my ass. Well, a great big pain in my hoo-ha is more like it.

  After another forty minutes of trying to settle down with haphazard birthquakes sprinkled throughout, the voice I’ve been dying to hear echoes into my room.

  “I am so sorry, man! I thought that was my girlfriend’s room!” When he finally appears, he is beet red in the face. “I uh … I walked into the wrong room,” he sheepishly clarifies before rushing to my side and giving me a kiss on the cheek.

  “It’s the man of the hour!” Tara says, welcoming him to our little party.

  Jeff smiles at me and then at Tara before running his fingertips through my hair like he always does. “How are you doing? What’s going on?”

  “Oh, you know! I’m just sitting here knitting a sweater.”

  Where the hell has he been? And where are all those flowers and balloons he was supposedly grabbing during whatever pit stop he made on his way to the hospital?

  “Good luck,” Tara says softly to Jeff with a not so subtle eye roll.

  “Thanks for being here, T. I can take it from here.” She stands from the chair, and he gives her a bear hug, truly appreciating our friendship.

  “It’s been fun. Are you sure you don’t want me to stick around? I don’t mind,” Tara says. But what I really think she’s saying is that she wants a front row seat for whatever epic freakout I’m inevitably going to dish out to Jeff.

  “Nah, I got it.”

  Tara leans over and gives me one last kiss on the cheek while attempting to wrap her arms around my ginormous belly.

  “Love you, Hen.”

  “Love you too, Tara.”

  “And just so you know, she really doesn’t want to be a soggy meatball.” They exchange a confused look and Tara shrugs. “Keep me updated. This auntie wants to come back and steal all the fresh baby snuggles as soon as the kiddo is born.”

  The instant Tara is out of the room, another contraction rips through my body. Jeff stands there helplessly, trying to coach me through some breathing exercises he probably picked up from some late night sitcoms because the cadence resembles something more like dying sloth than actual lamaze. The boy gets points for trying though.

  Then quickly loses them all a few minutes later.

  The rustling of a paper bag catches me off guard as I close my eyes in between contractions. When I open them, I see Jeff peeling back the wrapping of a sandwich. A putrid smell assaults my nostrils and I start to gag.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask, covering my face and turning away from him. My stomach has completely dropped, and this baby is trying to deliver a round-ending punch from the inside out. Clearly, it doesn’t care for deli meat either.

  “It’s a pastrami sandwich. From Mario’s,” he mumbles with his mouth full of food.

  Are you kidding me? The boy stopped at a deli and bought himself a pastrami sandwich to eat during the birth of his child? Mario’s is nowhere near the hospital! Or near his work for that matter!

  “Did you really go clear across town to get yourself a sandwich while I sat here in labor?”

  “What? The doctors warned that this could take a while, and I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

  He’s failing to see the problem. I’ve been here working hard at this birthing a human thing, and he is having a goddamned picnic, all while I’ve been forbidden to eat!

  “This is not dinner and a show, Jeff! Get that out of here before I puke.”

  He scurries out the door. Not even thirty seconds later, he returns to the room with his mouth full and pouty eyes. He apparently shoved the whole sandwich into his mouth.

  I shake my head and send a silent prayer for this kid to take after me.

  * * *

  Fire burns my body to ash as another unbearable contraction shreds my insides. I try to control the carnal sounds escaping my lips with breathing, but this time, it comes out more like a high-pitched whine that every dog in a five mile radius can hear. Jeff looks upon me with sympathy, the nurse with amusement as she fights a smile.

  I’m somewhere between a six and a seven the next time a nurse violates me to find out just how much longer it’ll be before I finally deliver.

  “If you’re going to have an epidural, now is the time we want to make that decision,” she says, pleased with herself.

  Jeff and I both answer at the exact same time, but imagine my surprise when the answers are completely different.

  “Yes!” I cheer a little too enthusiastically.

  “No.”

  Why the hell does he want me to be miserable right now?

  I grab a fistful of Jeff’s shirt and pull him toward me. His breath still reeks of pastrami, and I summon all the strength I have not to kill him.

  “Why do you hate me? If you value your life, you will get me the fucking drugs.”

  “Really?”

  I have no idea why he sounds so surprised by this decision. I never swore that I wouldn’t have an epidural. I only promised that I’d try to go without one for a little while. And it’s been more than a little while at this juncture.

  “You’ve come so far, and you’re doing great, Henley. A
re you sure you don’t want to try to go au naturel? At least for a little bit longer?”

  “No! I am sure I don’t want to try and go au naturel! I don’t get a special prize for being a masochist. And until you try pushing something the size of a watermelon through something the size of a nickel, you don’t get a say!”

  Jeff raises his hands up in surrender, and I’m impressed that the anesthesiologist is in my room with a needle the size of the Chrysler Building within a few short minutes. Everyone has to clear the room, so I shut my eyes and try to stay as still as humanly possible.

  Within moments, I am blissfully laying back in the hospital bed with a goofy grin on my face as the anesthesiologist looks down on me.

  “Holy shit,” I breathe in a drug-induced euphoria. If you could feel stars and rainbows and unicorns, I am certain that this is what it would feel like—magic.

  “Yeah?” says my new best friend, the anesthesiologist.

  “Yeah,” I sigh. I’m pretty sure I just fell in love with this man who so willingly and selflessly has taken away my pain. “Those are some good drugs.”

  The good doctor smiles, and I see just how handsome he truly is. This man no doubt receives multiple marriage proposals each day from expectant women.

  “Can you feel this?” I watch him run a line up my leg with the cap of his pen.

  I shake my head no. “I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. And therefore, I feel ah-mazing.”

  This shit really is magical.

  “Good, it looks like everything has taken properly. If you feel like you need a little bit more, just push this button here. It’ll allow you to control your pain management and release more as you need it. But it will only release a certain amount every ten minutes, so don’t get too trigger happy. What I suggest you do is try to close your eyes and get some rest. You’re going to need your strength here in a little bit. You won’t know when the contractions hit unless you’re looking at the monitor.”

  I nod off and find myself at peace for the first time all day. I don’t hear Jeff come back into the room, but I know he’s there from the way he squeezes my hand and the rancid, lingering smell of pastrami.