The Ex (24 page)

“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.

Every single second that Emma spent transitioning or whatever it was, my heart was in my throat. She groaned like a moribund cow—a comparison I would never, ever share with her—and writhed in the bed like she was filming the cold turkey detox scene from
Trainspotting
. I made a mental resolution that no one in our family was allowed to go to the hospital for any reason for the next several years, because I couldn’t take this annually.

Michael was seated beside the bed, holding her hand and stroking her arm, until she pulled it away with a moan.

“Should we be distracting her?” I asked the nurse.

In a soft voice, she responded, “Probably not. This is a stage where most women like to concentrate, to keep the pain from getting away from them.”

To keep it from getting away from them?
What the fuck did that mean? There Emma was, groaning, half-conscious, her stomach heaving and jerking with every contraction. This was supposed to be normal? And when the nurse “checked” her, it seemed like it would be a pretty big distraction; having some stranger’s fingers prodding my cervix would have sure distracted me.

Even though this was what Emma wanted more than anything in the world, I wished she wasn’t doing it. There should be some way that babies could emerge painlessly from the womb, a zipper or something where they could just take the kid out.

It was really getting to Michael, too. He looked absolutely miserable, about two seconds away from tears.

“Hey,” I whispered to him. “Why don’t you go use the bathroom or whatever, stretch your legs.”

He winced as he rose; his legs must have fallen asleep. “Yeah, probably a good idea. I’ll update Mr. Elwood and call my parents.”

I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up. I hadn’t intended to doze, but Emma’s panicked shout jolted me awake before I’d even realized I’d fallen asleep.

“I need to push!”

“Don’t do that!” I shot back before my eyes fully focused. I was on my feet between heartbeats. “I have no skills at baby catching. Do not push. I’m going to go get a nurse.”

I’d planned on going calmly into the hallway and finding someone. It didn’t work out that way. My adrenaline pumped through my veins like I was trying to lift a car off an accident victim, and I shouted, “Somebody get in here, she’s ready to push, and I don’t know how to get a baby out!”

“Sophie! Lower your voice!” someone barked down the corridor.

I blinked, certain I was hallucinating. But it really was Valerie, striding down the hallway with her coat flapping like a super hero’s cape behind her. Throwing my arms out, I ran at her. We collided in a hug that was really one-sided, but I didn’t care. I was so relieved to see her.

“Perhaps you could let me go to my daughter?” She sidestepped me and breezed on toward the room. I leaned against the wall and sighed in relief. One of the nurses gave me a strange look as she passed. They probably didn’t care for people shouting for help in their ward.

I hurried out to the waiting room, where Michael was getting himself more coffee, and Neil was asleep with his head tilted back at what looked like a very uncomfortable angle.

“Guys?” I immediately had both of their attention, though Neil looked at me through bleary, unfocused eyes. “She’s ready to go.”

Michael threw his cup, coffee and all, in the trash and took off at a run.

“Shouldn’t you go with him?” Neil asked, his eyes flicking to the door.

“No, Valerie is here, thank god.” I dropped into the chair beside his.

For the first time all night, he looked something other than worried. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Well. That was an odd assortment of words, coming from you.”

I gave him a tired shove and slumped down to rest my head on his shoulder. The uncomfortable wooden arms of our parallel chairs dug into my side. I was too exhausted to readjust my position.

“Sophie?” Neil wiggled his arm, and I blinked. A puddle of drool stained the sleeve of his shirt, and I stared at it, wiping my lip on the back of my hand as I sat up. Had I done that?

Michael stood in the half-opened doorway, beaming, and I snapped instantly awake.

“What the fuck, how long was I out?” I muttered, noticing a second too late that while I’d been unconscious, another family, all of whom looked vaguely disapproving, had come in to share the space.

“About forty-five minutes.” Neil got up and offered me his hand. Once I was on my feet, he tugged me impatiently through the door. The giddy smile on his face was contagious, because I was giggling like an idiot as we approached Emma’s room.

“Five pounds, eight ounces,” Michael told us as he pushed the door open. “Seventeen inches. And bigger feet than we were expecting.”

The last time I’d seen Emma, she’d been sweaty and miserable. Now, she was practically a nightlight in the dim room. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, she looked absolutely wired with happiness. Valerie stood beside the bed with a wrapped bundle in her arms, cooing and grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh my god!” I squealed, rushing at Emma. “You had a baby!”

She put her arms out, and I hugged her hard. Neil was already weepy with happiness, even before he saw the baby. The baby that he hoisted from Valerie’s arms without so much as a “please”.

“Oh. Oh, oh.” Tears shone in his eyes as he tucked his grandkid into the crook of his arm with the skill of someone far more comfortable with babies than I was. “Look at you. Oh, you’re getting a pony.”

“Dad,” Emma scolded.

“She’s absolutely perfect,” Valerie enthused, squeezing Emma’s shoulder.

Never taking his eyes from the baby, Neil said, “Well, she gets that from me, obviously.”

I crept around the foot of the bed to take a better peek at the little, hat-covered head barely showing from above the blanket. Neil turned to me, but his rapturous gaze was firmly locked on the baby.

On
Olivia
.

This baby was not winning any beauty pageants. Her eyes, two grotesque lumps swollen shut beneath lids, were bruised purple. Her face was red and a rash of pinprick white pimples covered her nose and cheeks. Her teensy face was scrunched up in anger; she looked like a little gnome. One skinny arm had slipped from the confines of her wrapping, and the skin was mottled with red. She was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.

And I loved her. At first sight, I loved her. She—or he, only time would tell—was a person. A whole little person who hadn’t been there just an hour ago. A combination of two people I considered my family, and a new member of my family, as well.

“Do you want to hold her, Sophie?” Michael asked gently. Of everyone in the room, I think he was the only person who understood my distrust of myself when it came to babies. I’d seen him trying to awkwardly balance Neil’s niece at his wedding.

“Oh, I don’t know if I should.” I stepped back, afraid that even the suggestion of me holding her would cause her to come crashing to the floor.

“Of course you should,” Emma said, gesturing to the chair. “You can sit down, and we can put her in your arms like you were the proud big sister.”

“Har har.” I rolled up my sleeves and took the chair, feeling exactly like the unsure child sibling Emma had described. Neil leaned down and helped me get Olivia just right in my arms before stepping back.

“She weighs less than a gallon of milk,” I marveled. “She reminds me of when I got my new laptop and I almost threw it taking it out of the box, because it was so much lighter than I expected.”

“Please don’t do that with my child,” Emma remarked dryly.

I glanced up at Neil and grinned. “Look, this pretty much proves I love your kid, okay? Because I wouldn’t hold a baby that came out of just anybody.”

“We forgot to tell you,” Michael said, clearing his throat. “We changed her name a bit. Instead of Olivia Jane, we’ve decided on Olivia Rose. For your mother, Mr. Elwood.”

A flicker of bittersweet pain crossed Neil’s face, but he held himself together. “She would have been so proud.”

“Quietly proud,” Emma said with a small laugh. “I suppose we’ll have to come up with some ridiculous nickname for her, like she had for all of us.”