CHAPTER TWELVE
Though our plan to spend some nights in the city, some at home, had put a teensy strain on us as we tried to adjust, by the end of May, we’d started to find the arrangement really convenient. Neil was able to meet with his tailor as often as necessary for him to be happy with his tux. I took the time usually lost in commuting to work extra hard—and get as ahead of work as I possibly could. I was thankfully nearby when Holli would have “inspirations” about the bridesmaids’ dresses. And, instead of coming home from work to an empty, barely stocked apartment three nights a week, I came home to, well, a home.
After a particularly stressful day, we were releasing some tension when Neil’s phone rang.
“Fuck it,” I gasped, still panting and rocking on top of him. “Call them back.”
But, just a few seconds later, my phone vibrated on the nightstand. Then, the house phone rang.
Neil grasped my hips to still me. “Someone…apparently needs us.”
“Yeah, and I need this,” I grumbled, but I rose, easing him from my body, and flopped onto the bed beside him. We both reached for our cell phones and said, almost in unison, “It was Michael.”
Neil’s phone rang again while he was grabbing his glasses so he could see to dial back. He fumbled his phone and barked, “Michael! Is everything all right?”
I sat up and ran a hand through my sweaty hair. Neil listened for a moment then he was up and moving, fast. I jumped up, too; something was definitely happening.
Oh god. Please let the baby be all right. I thought of my mom’s friend, Ricki, and how she’d had three premature stillbirths. Eventually, she’d been happy to adopt a toddler out of a foster home, but that didn’t make my gut feel any better. I always had a talent for remembering stuff at the worst time.
I bolted from the bed and grabbed my comfy after-work yoga pants and oversized, thin gray cowl neck sweater. I struggled into a bra and cami and hopped around on one foot as I tried to get my undies on. I was pulling the sweater over my head when Neil hung up.
He’d already put his jeans back on, and he zipped them as he spoke. “We have to go. Emma is in labor.”
“It’s too early,” I protested, though my heart resumed normal beating at the fact that the news hadn’t been worse.
“Yes, it is,” Neil said, all quiet intensity and coiled anxiety as he put on his sweater. He snatched his keys, glasses, and wallet from the fireplace mantle. “Get your coat.”
Neil drove like a maniac. We were going to get to the hospital one way or another.
Because of the late hour, the main entrance was closed. We had to enter through the emergency room. They directed us to the obstetrics department waiting room while a nurse went to fetch Michael.
“I wish we knew what was going on. Do you think they’ll let us see her?” Neil’s gaze darted to the door we’d just come through, as though expecting a full team of nurses and doctors to burst in with urgent news.
We sat in two of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, trying to ignore the television stuck on Fox News, its volume quiet enough to make our ears naturally strain, but loud enough to be unignorable. I’d gotten really good at surviving waiting room hell when Neil had been in the hospital, but waiting for Neil and waiting with Neil were two different situations entirely. His knee bounced constantly. He kept checking his watch, then his phone, then his watch again, as though it would make the time go faster. When I got him a cup of coffee, he took it from me with trembling hands.
The waiting room door opened, and Michael stepped through. I looked for any trace of anxiety on his face, but he exuded pure excitement. “Mr. Elwood, Sophie. Big day, huh?”
I went to him and hugged him. His joy was contagious, so I took it as a cue and upped my enthusiasm. “Congratulations!”
It seemed that Neil had an immunity to Michael’s infectious enthusiasm. “What are they saying? It’s too early. Are they going to try to halt her labor?”
Michael shook his head. “Nah. They did another ultrasound, and the doctor estimated the baby is about six, six-and-a-half pounds.”
“Forget about weight, what about the, uh, the…” I raised my hands and opened them and closed them, too worried to come up with the right word.
“Lungs,” Neil supplied for me. “The baby’s lungs are—”
“They gave Emma some steroids, just in case. But the baby is thirty-five weeks, so she’s almost full-term.” Michael spoke with the quiet authority of a man who would accept nothing but the best possible outcome. “Emma says the last month of pregnancy just packs the baby fat on, anyway.”
“Well, Emma would know,” I said lightly, hoping to calm Neil down some. Neil and Michael were more alike than either of them—or Emma—was comfortable admitting, so I assumed that whatever she had told Michael was a slightly condensed version of the truth meant to comfort him.
Neil slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocked on the balls of his feet. “She’s doing fine. She’s dilated to four.” Michael paused. “You haven’t heard from Valerie, have you?”
“I haven’t.” Not that I would have expected to. “I thought she was here with Emma. Isn’t she her coach or something?”
“No, she was the back-up coach that Emma hoped not to have to call.” Michael scrubbed a hand down his face. “Her friend, Amy, was supposed to do it, but she’s in India on a spiritual retreat, and Valerie isn’t answering her phone.”
Neil already had his cell out. “I’ll call her assistant.”
“Maybe you guys could come back there?” Michael’s eyes widened in pleading hope. “I don’t want to leave her alone for very long, but I need to take a walk or something to burn off some of this energy.”
This must be what Botox feels like. Though I was standing still, expression frozen, in my mind, I was stretching one arm out to brace against the wall, my other arm wrapped around my stomach as I tried not to vomit.
It’s not that I hate babies. I’m just super afraid of them, and pregnancy grosses me out. I guess because I don’t want kids, I don’t understand what would motivate someone to put themselves through all that. But it was what Emma wanted, so I had to be supportive, right?
But if I saw blood or anything crowning, I would pass the fuck out.
“Valerie’s assistant says she’s at the London office,” Neil said, running a hand through his hair. “That would explain why she’s not answering her phone. It’s four in the morning there.”
“Let’s go back, so you can see Emma.” Michael gestured over his shoulder.
The maternity ward wasn’t what I expected at all. I’d thought there would be more screaming, but it was strangely quiet. It still had that hospital smell, though, and that didn’t help my increasing queasiness.
I’d also expected Emma to be sleeping or sickly looking. She wasn’t even lying down. She was sitting up with the head of the bed raised, reading on her phone. She looked totally fine. She didn’t even have an IV or anything.
Neil rushed to her side like she was dying. He kissed her forehead, and she rolled her eyes. “Daddy, I’m fine. Don’t overreact.”
“You’re not in any pain, are you?” he asked, looking her over as though she would have the bloody end of a broken bone sticking out of her somewhere.
She tipped her head back with a frustrated groan. “I’m in labor. Of course I’m in pain.”
“Emma wants to do this ‘naturally’.” Michael crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I think it’s a little crazy—”
“We have been over this,” she warned. “Why don’t you get out of here? You’re driving me nuts.”
“That’s my excuse to go.” He rolled away from the wall and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Neil put his hand on Emma’s shoulder. “Don’t you think you should have something? I’m sure it’s perfectly safe—”
“Sophie,” Emma began reasonably. “Could you please explain to your idiot fiancé that this is my bloody body, and i
f I don’t want to take any bloody pain medication, I’m bloody well not going to!”
Neil turned to me, and I just shrugged.
Emma let out a soft “phew” of air between her lips. She dropped her phone in her lap, arms going rigid as her face scrunched up. The very important-looking machine parked next to the bed showed a green line that had spiked sharply and plateaued as it moved across the screen.
Neil leaned down beside her, asking, “What’s the matter? Do you need something?”
I shook my head. “Neil. Shut up. She’s having a contraction.”
How was it that I was the calm one? He’d already had a baby. Well, Valerie’d had a baby. He’d just been there. Had he been this worked up, then?
The line finally dipped, and Emma flopped her head back and took a few shaky breaths. “Thank you, Sophie.”
“I’m sorry.” Neil patted Emma’s hand. “It’s difficult to see your child in pain.”
“Yeah, this must be really hard for you,” she snapped. “Where’s Mum? She won’t answer her goddamned phone.”
“Your mother is in London. Her assistant is going to keep trying, and she’ll be on the first flight possible,” Neil promised.
“She’s my backup!” Emma started to push herself up from the bed, as though she could just march over to England and get Valerie, but Neil gently urged her back down. She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t do this with just Michael! He’s so fucking stupid!”
“You’re just saying that because you’re in labor,” Neil interjected. I widened my eyes and slowly shook my head at him, but it was too late. He’d already been patronizing enough.
“Hey, uh, maybe we should…” I motioned toward the door.
Emma fixed a hopeful gaze on me. “Stay, Sophie? Please?”
That knocked me back a step, literally. Emma and I had come a long way toward liking each other, but I had no idea we were on stay-with-me-while-I-suffer-through-labor terms. If I didn’t rank as high as Neil or Michael, and she was saying all these horrible things about and to them, what the hell was she going to say to me? “Are you sure?”
“I just need somebody who is actually sympathetic and not a dismissive male ass.” Her mouth turned down in the saddest face I’d ever seen on her. She looked like she was going to cry.
I thought back to the July before, when Neil had been so super sick and the due date of my terminated pregnancy had rolled around. At the time, Neil’s survival had still been touch-and-go, and I’d thought about what it would have been like if I’d kept our baby. Would I have delivered alone, without any support system at all?
No. Emma would have stayed with me.
That hypothetical created an obligation I couldn’t ignore. I motioned Neil away and took the armchair beside Emma’s bed. “Go on. Go find Michael, and you guys can worry together.”
He lingered uncertainly, reluctant to go. “If you need anything—”
“I’ll come get you,” I assured him. I was so proud of myself for taking charge and helping Emma out that my confidence swelled to epic proportions. Wow, maybe I could do this. I could be a nurse or something, if I weren’t doing the whole fashion magazine thing. Or a doctor! What if I went to medical school and became an obstetrician?
“Oh, fuck me, another one already?” Emma sat up then doubled over and groaned. The spiky line thing went way higher this time and plateaued for longer. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Rub her back? Talk her through it? Tell her to bear down, like they did in the movies?
Well, there went that confidence.
There was a knock at the door, and I hoped, though I knew it was extremely unlikely, that Valerie was on the other side. It was a nurse, a young woman with dark hair pulled back in a thick French braid. “How are we doing?”
“Fine,” Emma said, though she was still out of breath. “Is this about as bad as it gets?”
“Um…” The nurse looked away quickly, fiddling with something on the monitor cart. “You know, I wouldn’t know? I’ve never had a baby.”
I could practically hear the nuclear detonation of fury going off in Emma’s head.
“Can I get you anything?” the nurse asked. “Ice chips? Some water?”
“Sure, whatever.” She closed her eyes again. “Can we turn the lights down? My head is doing me in.”
“You’re in labor, and you have a headache?” I blurted. “That sucks.”
“Do you really think so, Sophie?” Emma snapped, and I figured I should probably hold my tongue.
Labor apparently takes longer than it does in the movies. Emma dozed off when she could, as the hours ticked on, but because of her headache, they made her keep a blood pressure cuff on. It would randomly swell up and piss her off, which was super helpful. Sometimes, Michael went out for coffee, sometimes, I did. The smell made Emma sick, so we took turns stepping into the hallway to chug it and chew some gum before we went back in.
I checked on Neil every now and then, to get an update about Valerie’s geographical location and also to make sure he hadn’t chewed all of his fingernails down to nubs.
“How is she doing?” he asked when I came out the third time.
“She’s dilated to six? I don’t know what that means. But she seems to be doing okay.” I shrugged and checked the clock. It wasn’t really four in the morning, was it? “Does it always take this long?”
Neil nodded in agreement. “Valerie was thirty hours before they took Emma via cesarean.”
“Thirty hours?” My mind reeled. In the time I’d been with her, Emma had gone from peppy, but surly, to just plain miserable and emotionally exhausted. But Neil didn’t need to know that. It would just worry him.
“It was the Demerol that slowed Valerie’s labor down, I’m sure of it.” Neil made a disgusted sound. “But I do wish Emma would take after her mother and get some kind of injection or spinal…thing.”
I felt like I’d been plunged into an alien world, where the language sounded similar to English, but I couldn’t understand any of the words. Sort of like going to Iceland, actually. “Any news on Valerie?”
“She’s on the way. Her flight left just after midnight.” Neil checked his watch. “I suppose it’s just a race against the clock now.”
After a while, it started to become clear that Valerie was not going to be there on time. At around six, Emma went into something called “transition”, and everything turned into the horror show of labor from the movies. Except, it wasn’t funny. She didn’t threaten to kill Michael, or crush his hand really hard. It was more that she grabbed the bed rails and writhed and cried.
Michael stayed by her side, pressing cool cloths to her forehead and murmuring encouragement, and I sat there, not sure if I should stay or go. When I got up to leave, she threw a hand out. “No, no.”
“Okay, I’ll stay here, then.” I rubbed my hands on the thighs of my jeans and bounced nervously in the chair. “Let me just step outside for a phone call. I’ll be right, right back.”
In the hallway, I dialed my mom’s cell and shuffled the balls of my feet waiting for her to answer. “Mom!”
“Sophie?” In all the drama, I’d forgotten that people who weren’t watching their soon-to-be stepdaughter having a baby would possibly be asleep. “What’s going on?”
“Emma is having her baby. And I’m here. Well, not, like, here here. I’m in the hallway, and I’m super freaking out.” I lowered my voice and hoped Emma hadn’t heard me. “It looks like it hurts a lot.”
“It does hurt a lot,” Mom said sternly. “Apparently, you weren’t listening when I told you that over and over when you were in high school.”
“Yeah, I know. That has formed a lot of choices since then.” I hoped I sounded more tired than crabby. “I am just not mentally prepared to be here, doing this.”
“Does Emma want you there?” Mom asked, ever practical.
“Yeah. Why, I have no idea, but she wants me there with her.” I paused. “Maybe just to keep Neil out? Or because her
mom can’t be here.”
“Oh, that’s a shame. Your grandma stayed with me the entire time I was having you,” Mom told me, as though I’d never heard the story of my own birth before. “Of course, it was to tell me that I’d gotten myself into this on my own, and I had to live with the consequences.”
“I feel bad for Valerie. She’s going to miss the birth of her first grandkid.” Maybe the birth of her only grandkid. Emma had gone through so much to conceive this baby, and there was no guarantee she’d have the same luck twice.
“Don’t you have something on your phone to record it? Like an app, or a scripe or something?”
“It’s not scripe, it’s called—” Skype! “Mom, that’s fucking genius.”
“Sophie Anne, I will wash your mouth out with soap!”
“Sorry.” I glanced back at the door. “I’m gonna go. I just needed to talk to someone who sounds like they aren’t under assloads of stress.” I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “I needed to hear my mom’s voice, actually.”
“You can call me back if you need to.” Her voice was gentle and soft, the way it always sounded when I needed comfort.
“Okay, Mom. I’ll talk to you later.”
Despite all the ways she annoyed me, she was my mom. And she’d gone through what Emma was going through, right now, to have me. I was going to give her the biggest hug when I saw her.
Bolstered by Mom’s brilliant idea, I slipped quietly back into the room and motioned Michael over.
“Hey, my mom had an idea, so Valerie doesn’t miss the birth,” I whispered, and held up my phone. “We can Skype her.”
“Can she do that on a plane?” he asked, and as if on cue, Neil was at the door.
“Hey, do you know if Valerie can Skype from the plane?” I asked.
Neil shook his head. “Not from a commercial flight, no. But she should be landing any time now.”
“Well, keep trying her. If she’s going to miss it, we can Skype her. It was my mom’s idea,” I added as an afterthought.
“Smart of her.” Neil sounded too impressed, but I didn’t comment on it. Now was not the time for a fight. I sent him back to the waiting room to continue Valerie Watch 2015. I was almost more excited for her to arrive than for the baby.
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