They'd decided to wait a few days, probably until they were back on solid ground, to tell anyone that they knew. People on board congratulated them; it wasn’t exactly a secret, what had happened. As the manicurist had told Melissa (how glad she was, now, that she had gotten her nails done!), there was usually a whole graduating class of people aboard the cruise who got engaged; so they had a party with as many of these people as they could gather on the very last night of their stay, meeting other engaged couples and promising with at least some degree of intentionality to stay in touch. Melissa had a whole notebook filled with random numbers and names that she had yet to enter into her phone from that night.
But that didn’t matter now. Now, she was distracting herself again. She thought that distraction, on the whole, might be an effective panacea from the world of pain she was now experiencing.
They were in a taxi. Rodger hadn’t wanted to drive. Rodger, this man, her fiancé, who was one of the most thrill-seeking men she'd ever met, didn’t want to drive, not this time. He wanted to stay in the back with her, his face pale. She hadn’t ever seen him really scared before. Not before right now.
It had been a normal evening. They’d been home from the cruise for several months. Per their decision, they’d announced their engagement to close friends and family a few days after they got home and everyone had been all aflutter, and there had been a series of gorgeously designed combination engagement parties and baby showers, at which Melissa had gotten to know Rodger’s extended family. After those had died down, Melissa and Rodger had woken early one Saturday morning to a knock at the door.
“We’re from the LoveMatches app,” said a man with a skinny microphone in a purple bedazzled blazer. He was standing on their front step. It was very early and he was very loud. “We have in our records that you two met via our service – and a little birdie told us (Twitter, of course!) that you’ve gotten engaged. Now, with you two being such a lovely couple (and we see that you’re to be doubly congratulated—or triply?) we’d love to feature your story on our site—”
That was as far as he got before Rodger had shut the door in his face and stomped back to bed. To be fair to Rodger, it was really very early in the morning; Melissa always thought afterward that the PR department at LoveMatches might have really picked virtually any other time of day, any other day of the week, to show up unannounced on their doorstep. Later that day, she and Rodger reached out to the LoveMatches team and gave them their story; they figured, why not? It might help another couple and free press was good press, or at least, so Rodger jovially said to the PR marketer on the phone. It is possible that he was just trying to make up for being rather rude earlier that morning.
But that had been then, and now Melissa was hurting. She tried to distract herself again. What else had happened after the cruise? She and Rodger had gone to more prenatal doctor’s visits, getting more and more excited with every picture, every video they could see of their two children. They’d expanded the nursery to fit two kids instead of one. They’d thought about joining a support group for families of multiples, but decided to wait until after the babies were born, just to see how they’d be feeling then.
“How are you doing?” asked Rodger. His voice was high-pitched and scratchy. He really wasn’t having a good time. He grasped her hand clammily.
Melissa was having a worse time. Her water had broken about an hour ago, and they were two weeks early. That was normal for twins, their doctor had insisted; and he’d put them on constant, alerted baby watch almost two weeks ago. There was a good chance that they’d be preemies, and there was a good chance they’d have to spend some time in the neonatal unit, their doctor had cautioned them.
Melissa was mentally prepared for that, but she knew that she was going to have a hard time being calm if her babies were wheeled away from her to sit in a hospital bed. She’d gotten more and more attached to them as her pregnancy wore on, and she knew that shortly she’d do anything for them, anything in the world.
Anything, except possibly give birth to them. Because simply doing that was still among the scariest things Melissa could conceptualize. And here she was, whizzing through the city late at night, going ever faster toward doing just that thing.
Before Rodger had effectively passed out (he was awake, he was lucid, but he was just a tad useless just now, gawping as he was, squeezing her hand and looking at her with glassy eyes; she got it, but it would have been nice had he been an actual support in those moments) he'd had the presence of mind to call their doctor, who had woken up and gotten to the hospital and was now purportedly making sure that everything was in order so that when they pulled up to the hospital doors, they could just go in and immediately get to their room.
The taxi pulled up to the hospital doors. Melissa got out, with great difficulty—she had two bowling balls stuck to her stomach, after all—and leaned on Rodger to get into the building. Their doctor greeted them inside and they stopped by the front desk to get precisely two signatures on two forms (Melissa was immediately grateful, again, for the large amount of care and money Rodger put into their experience; she had a dim memory of watching sitcoms wherein women who were fairly in labor were put through untold minutes of bureaucratic paperwork before they were allowed to go to their rooms) before she was thrown (gently) into a wheelchair and whisked into a beautiful private room.
Within moments her clothes were off, an open-backed smock was on, and she was laying in a bed with crisp, cold sheets. Her feet were in stirrups and a nurse with an especially professional demeanor (for which Melissa was glad, given where she was) was checking to see how far the baby was along.
The waves of pain had begun hours ago. Melissa was tentatively hopeful that she was quite far along, that she'd been successfully contracting for hours and she was somehow near the end.
“Not bad, not bad, you’re three centimeters dilated,” the nurse said brightly.
Only three? Melissa suddenly felt very tired.
“I’ll bring you some ice chips,” the nurse said.
Rodger squeezed her hand sympathetically. He seemed to have come a little bit back to life. He now was calmly stepping around their room–a private room, thanks to Rodger–familiarizing himself with where the outlets were and the contents of the small bathroom. He had a tiny wheelie suitcase he'd packed for the event, which he now began to empty on the bed near Melissa’s legs.
“Snacks, for me, mostly, but also for you to dig into after the birth,” he said, depositing a pack of Oreos and beef jerky on the bed. “An extra-long iPhone charger for you; glad that I brought it, seeing as the nearest available outlet to your bed is all the way across the room.
“I also brought your laptop, you know, the one with all of your favorite shows downloaded onto it.”
“Thanks,” said Melissa gratefully, who knew that she would be wanting something to distract her from what might be a very long period of intense labor. She’d downloaded the entire run of Parks and Recreation, and she was very much looking forward to relaxing (as much as she could) and getting back into it.
Rodger unpacked various other blankets and clothing items, hanging up a robe on the wall next to the bathroom (the familiar object immediately made the room seem that much cozier) and he asked Melissa to lean forward, just for a moment, so he could put one of the pillowcases from their own bed onto the hospital pillow behind her.
“Anything to make you feel more comfortable,” he said.
Melissa smiled and thanked him and reached up to feel the diamond ring on a thin chain around her neck. Her fingers had swelled up over the course of her third trimester to the point where she didn't wish to jeopardize the integrity of her ring by potentially stretching it past its own limits.
“I’d invite you to lay next to me, but maybe you could just pull up a chair and we’ll watch a show for a bit?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Rodger. He paused. “I’m really proud of you, you know,” he said.
<
br /> “Thanks,” Melissa said; and they smiled at each other for a moment. Then Melissa underwent another contraction and didn't know anything but twisty pain until a minute or so later, after which Rodger had set up their tiny ad hoc entertainment station.
“Ice chip?”
“Yes, please,” Melissa said, taking the cup and letting a chip or two melt on her tongue. They watched TV for a while, holding hands, specifically so that Melissa could clutch on to Richard when she was contracting; and, after a while, the nurse came back to check and see how far along Melissa was.
“Still just three centimeters,” the nurse said. “I’m going to consult with your doctor, but it’s likely that if you haven’t progressed significantly within a few hours, we’re going to schedule you for a C-section.”
Melissa raised her eyebrows at this, but she knew that it was highly normal for a first-time mother with twins to have to undergo surgery to get the children safely out. When the nurse had left, she looked at Rodger with wide eyes.
“Surgery, yes, okay, but we knew this was a possibility,” Rodger said bracingly. “You’re going to be super. You’re going to do just fine. We’re going to take care of you—this is the best surgical team in the state, you know that, right? Well, now you do. It’s going to be just fine.”
“Perhaps if I think really hard and try very hard to dilate a lot right now, they’ll let me deliver naturally.”
“Sure, sure,” Rodger said; but even through the haze of pain which was cast over everything, Melissa could tell that he was placating her. She struggled to sit up.
“They’re going to check you again all the way until morning before they decide,” Rodger said. “It’s still the middle of the night, so you have some time.”
“Good.” Melissa tried to squeeze her abdomen, and erupted in tears because the pain was so bad.
“Shh, shh,” Rodger said. “You know, I read somewhere that your body does the most work while you’re asleep, so, perhaps if you took a nap, you’d wake up and just be more dilated overall…”
“Yeah,” said Melissa. Right, she added. She knew that wasn’t the case. It wouldn’t be called labor if you could do it while you were asleep.
But she laid down and tried to fall asleep anyway. She knew that whether she delivered naturally or by surgery, she was in for a very large day; and very large days are always better if they come with some sleep. She was very glad, anyway, that Rodger had assured her that this was the best medical team in the state, and she knew that he would be watching like a hawk to make sure that she got the best care possible. She knew that she was in a very lucky position, in this way. Black women often didn’t get the best medical care, which was a problem.
She drifted off, fidgeting, because even though she was used to not being totally comfortable at night, she wasn’t used to not being in her own bed. In her own bed there was usually at least one position she could wrestle herself into that she would consider at least comfortable-adjacent, but here, in this thin hospital bed, with her back propped up at an odd angle, she didn’t think that she was going to be quite so lucky.
So she was very surprised when her eyes next fluttered open to the kindly face of the nurse greeting her good-morning.
“Pop up and I’ll just check you really quick,” she said, her bubbly voice feeling completely at odds with the thick haze of sleep Melissa was fighting through.
“Ah,” she said, after a moment. Melissa’s heels were in the air. She felt horribly exposed, and just horrible in general; her belly had swollen to a point where she could hardly see anything but it, let alone her own toes. There was a crushing, corkscrewing pain which began in the center of her and was starting to radiate outward. She hoped that the escalation in her pain meant that she had certainly dilated further. She closed her eyes and projected her want out into the universe. 9 centimeters. 10! Anything which meant that she was ready to go into delivery mode now. She moaned as the pain suddenly, sharply got worse. Perhaps this was the transition part of labor about which she had heard so much…
“Sorry,” she heard the nurse say. “Still just the three centimeters, I’m afraid. I’m going to go grab your doctor.”
She left without adjusting Melissa’s legs back down. Melissa almost shouted out at this. She didn’t want to be left open like that!
But before anything like that could happen, the doctor was there. “Hello,” Melissa heard, faintly. “I’m just going to check a few things, and then we’re going to pop you on down the hall and get these babies out of you, okay?”
Melissa had already consented to an emergency C-section, if needed, and in that moment she was beyond grateful that she had. Not because she wanted a C-section–of course she didn’t want a C-section–but because her vision was beginning to tunnel and everyone was speaking as if from very far away and all Melissa wanted to do was sleep.
With a thunk, her bed began to move away from the wall. She could hear the wheels squeaking beneath her. Someone—Rodger, hopefully—took her hand in his.
She tried to concentrate–on anything, the ceiling whizzing above her, the pressure of Rodger’s hand, the fact that she was about to have a baby–but the pain was becoming too much, and she was starting to black out. She remembered hearing somewhere that the mother had to be lucid for the delivery, surgery or otherwise, so she fought to stay alert.
Someone put a mask on her face, and she closed her eyes and breathed in–and suddenly, the pain from her lower body vanished. To be fair, it was because her lower body vanished. The mask was removed and she looked fearfully, with huge eyes, at Rodger, who was now wearing a cap and gown and a mask over the lower half of his face.
“You’re doing brilliantly,” she heard him say. “You’re going to be just fine. They just numbed your lower half and they’re about to start the process…Melissa,” he said.
Melissa nodded at him, showing that she was awake, that she could do this.
“Melissa,” he breathed, “Our kids. They’re about to be here.”
***
Later, Melissa remembered none of that. None at all. It didn’t matter. She'd told herself that she wouldn't suffer the same delivery-related amnesia that every mother from the dawn of time has suffered, but she hadn’t been able to hold onto it. All of the pain that she had gone through–terrible, awful, to be sure–had paled. It’s a biological survival instinct: If mothers remembered with clear granularity every pang of labor and delivery, the human race would die out, as no woman would want to go through it twice. The swell of post-birth hormones is so great that it literally wipes out the pain experienced previously.
Her two babies were wriggling on her lap.
She grinned at Rodger and told him what he already knew. She’d been doing that all day. She couldn’t stop.
“Look how one of them has an entire mop of hair, and the other is completely bald,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Rodger. “I didn’t know that was a thing that could happen.”
He reached out and touched one of their cheeks. The skin was so red, so warm, so fragile…
The baby started to cry. Melissa picked him up and handed him to Rodger, who began to walk around the room with the baby held to his chest.
Melissa was left alone for a moment with her daughter, the one who had yet to grow a single hair. She reached out with her very large arm, so disproportionate to her tiny monkey body, and stretched. She opened one eye, then the other, then decided that she didn’t like that so much and promptly went back to sleep.
Melissa giggled.
“What,” said Rodger, bouncing their baby boy around on his way back to the bed.
“Little girl likes a nap,” said Melissa. She couldn’t take her eyes off the baby.
“So,” said Richard.
“So?”
“What are we going to name them, do you think?”
“I think—I think that we’re going to name them something cute, just like they are,” said
Melissa in a tiny baby voice.”
“No, really. Should we go alliterative? Jack and Jill? Beth and Bill? Winona and Will?”
“Well, definitely not any of those,” said Melissa, laughing, looking up at her fiancé for a moment. She kissed him, and then she kissed her daughter’s head. It smelled like oil. She thought that she could never get used to that smell.
“Well, what do you want to name them?”
Rodger sat down on the bed next to her and they looked at their two children, side by side, so different and yet so similar.
“Something beautiful, that says just how lucky we are to have them both,” said Melissa.
“As lucky as I am to have you,” said Rodger. He kissed Melissa’s cheek, and she turned to smile at him, then turned away. She couldn't stop looking at them as they lay there, in her arms, completely helpless and utterly lovable. One of them–the boy, their son–lifted his hand in the air in a stretch.
“Long fingers,” the nurse had commented. “Pianist’s fingers. He’ll be a musician.”
Melissa thought about this as she gave their son a tiny high-five, as he closed his eyes and gummed his gums together a few times before settling back into his swaddle.
“I like the name George,” she said, finally.
“Excellent,” said Rodger. “And what about Regina? We could call her Gina. Or Ginny. Or—“
“Ginny,” Melissa said. “It’s perfect.”
They looked down at George and Ginny, their perfect twins, and were so happy with where their life had led them that they could not imagine being any happier.
The end... but wait:
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Be My Bride and Have My Baby Page 13