Chapter 25 Penises,If You Will, Penii Cara #3
“Okay. It’s going to be okay, all right? I promise.” I shoot off a text to Jennie and her mom, asking if either of them can come watch Ireland, and then I soak a cloth in cool water, laying it over the back of Olivia’s neck. “Is your bag packed?”
She nods. “Closet.”
I find it sitting on a chair, opened and with a note from Olivia to herself, reminding her what last-minute things need to be added when it’s time to go. I busy myself finding each one of those things, tossing them inside.
“Where are we going?” Olivia croaks as I dial Carter, sticking my phone between my ear and my shoulder so I can hoist her to her feet.
“To the hospital.”
I’VE NEVER BEEN A CATASTROPHIZER. I’ve always been exceptionally skilled at keeping my cool while everyone spirals around me. A God-given talent I’ve never had to think about.
I’m calm as I explain to Carter what’s happening, and I manage to reel him back in when he starts panicking by promising him that we’re getting an early flight home sorted for him.
I’m calm as I explain the situation to Jennie and Holly when they arrive to watch Ireland, and calm as I load Olivia in the car.
I’m calm as I relay the same details to her midwife when we meet her at the hospital, and again to the nurses and OBs who are eager to help.
I’m calm as Olivia clutches my hand while the doctors explain that she’s developed sudden and severe preeclampsia and they need to perform an emergency C-section as soon as possible.
I’m calm as I deliver the news to Carter, even as he cries over the phone, his anguish palpable when he finds out that there isn’t a flight that’s going to get him here in time to be next to Olivia, holding her hand through all of this.
I’m calm as I promise Olivia, over and over, that as scary as it is, it’s going to be okay. That we caught it in time, and she’s in the most capable hands. Her babies are going to be fine. She’s going to be fine.
But on the inside, I’m falling the fuck apart.
I’m terrified, exhausted, and barely hanging on. I’m pouring all of myself into Olivia, because she needs it so much more than I do.
And when she asks for Rosie, begs me to call her, to get her here, a strange sensation starts in my chest and flows outward.
A heavy weight that sinks my heart. A voice in my head that reminds me I’m not enough.
That I haven’t done enough. Give it up, it whispers, and when Rosie arrives at the hospital, a day past her own due date, and the two of them embrace, the voice grows louder.
Sure, Olivia said all she’d needed through her pregnancy was for me to show up in whatever capacity I was able to.
But while I was obsessed with vitamins and cycle tracking and overhauling my entire life in an effort to magically fix my uterus, Rosie was there for her.
Rosie saw it all, related to every minute of it.
I guess the one thing to come out of this is that I have no jealousy left. There’s no bitterness as I watch the two of them, how much closer they’ve gotten through their pregnancies. Just a deep-seated disappointment in myself for not being a better friend.
“Where are you going?”
I stop in the doorway, glancing over my shoulder. “I was just going to give you some space.”
Rosie tosses on her jacket before squeezing Olivia once more, stopping to hug me too. “She’s so lucky to have you,” she whispers in my ear, and then she’s gone.
“Where’s she going?”
Olivia points to the bag Rosie brought with her, sitting on a chair in the corner of the room.
“Rosie’s had a C-section before. She knows all the tips and tricks.
She brought me some recovery essentials, and a few words of wisdom.
” Olivia looks me over, a crease between her brows as she takes in my emotional state, which may or may not be physical too.
She points to a bottle of water. “Chug that.”
“What?”
“Now.” With a charming grin, “Please.”
I do as I’m told, something I am 100 percent not used to.
“Thank you. I need you well hydrated. Can’t have you passing out on me.”
“Passing out on you?”
Olivia’s midwife joins us, hand on my shoulder as she steps around me, smiling at Olivia as she checks her vitals. “Five minutes to showtime, Mama. You’re going to do so great.” She disappears into a closet, producing a set of blue scrubs, passing them to me. “Cara, let’s get you scrubbed in.”
“Scrubbed what?” My head whips back and forth between the midwife and Olivia. “What am I scrubbing?”
“Scrubbing in,” Olivia replies simply. “For surgery. If my husband can’t be here, there’s only one other person in this entire world I want holding my hand through this.”
I point at myself, my nose stinging as I shift on my feet. The two-letter word is barely a breath. “Me?”
“You. Feel like delivering a couple of babies today?”
I don’t think I ever answered the question, truthfully. I did what I seem to do best these days: burst into tears.
NOW I’M STANDING UNDER LIGHTS that are far too bright, in a sterile room that is far too white, watching Olivia throw up in a tiny pan while she’s lying on her back, except she’s missing most of the pan and throwing up all over her midwife’s hand.
“I had Taco Bell last night,” she cries, then vomits again. “I’m so sorry!” Another round. “I don’t understand how there’s even anything left!”
This feels like an inopportune moment to tell the midwife that I’m actually responsible for the Taco Bell, so I just keep squeezing Olivia’s hand, wiping her face with a wet cloth every time she vomits.
My phone is set up in the corner of the room, recording everything so Carter can watch later.
I turn to it, giving it a big thumbs-up and a wide grin. “She’s doing so great!”
I say that loosely, of course. Olivia was not, in fact, calm for her spinal, and as someone who’s terrified of normal-sized needles, I was no help when they pulled out that bad boy.
It took less than two minutes for Olivia to no longer be able to feel her legs, and approximately thirty seconds after they laid her down—explaining that a spinal tap can sometimes cause upset stomachs—for her to vomit.
When the vomiting subsides and she’s cleaned up, the OB standing behind the curtain that blocks her torso from view looks up. “How you feeling, Olivia? Ready to welcome two more to your crew?”
“Two more,” she murmurs, as if it’s only sinking in now. Her gaze swings to me, fearful and red-rimmed as her chest heaves. “What if I’m not ready? Care, oh my God, am I ready? Two. Two. That’s… two plus one is…”
“Three,” I whisper, smoothing her hair back. “Three babies. And two adults. Well, one adult, and one adult-child.” She chokes out a laugh, and I smile. “Your family of three is growing by two today, and you? You. Are. Ready.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because you have a whole community surrounding you. And nobody does things alone here, right?”
“Never alone.” Her grip tightens around mine when the OB announces that she’s making the first cut into Olivia’s abdomen. “Tell me something,” she demands for the second time in twenty-four hours.
“The entire labor and delivery team in this room right now is women. I’m having a very proud feminist moment. Remember what I said about women taking over the world? I think this is it. This is where it begins.”
She rolls her eyes. “Something you’re scared to say out loud, Cara.”
And this time, as she lies there on the OR table, scared out of her mind and desperate for a distraction, I comply without hesitation, blurting out exactly what she’s asked for.
“There’s this little boy from Second Chance Home that Emmett and I can’t stop thinking about, and I don’t know what I’m even thinking, but-but-but… do you think we’d be horrible foster parents?”
“Foster parents?” Olivia’s gaze warms. “Horrible? Care, are you kidding me? Can you even imagine how lucky the kid who got saddled with you two for any amount of time would be? There isn’t a doubt in my mind that you’d be incredible. That you’d change lives for the better.”
“My heart hurts so much,” I admit on a whisper. “What if it’s too broken to love them the way they need?”
Olivia shakes her head, her breathing slow as the delivery team works, gently explaining each step.
“We think of heartbreak like it’s the end, and I know it feels like that in the moment.
But the older I get, the more I look back at all my old heartbreaks and realize they were just the beginning.
Another door opening, a chance for us to know ourselves better than we ever did before.
That part of you will always hurt, but maybe it’s also the foundation you build on.
Maybe it’s where you honor the person you were, and where you fall in love with who you are now.
So don’t you dare undermine what that heart of yours is capable of.
It can bend, it can break, and still, it will do all of those things in the name of love. ”
Sniffling, I look away in an attempt not to cry.
At two inches shy of six feet, that means my eyes clear the curtain and accidentally land on my best friend’s open torso.
“Oh, Jesus fuck.” Turning to the camera, I tell future Carter, “Your wife is in the middle of birthing two babies via major surgery, and she’s out here delivering sage wisdom.
What the fuck have you been putting in her coffee? ”
Olivia snorts a tired laugh. “I think you’d make an amazing foster mom.”
The doctor looks up, nodding at the midwife and me, indicating that it’s time.
I squeeze Olivia’s hand. “And I think you’re ready to welcome two more to your crew.”
Glancing over the curtain, I watch as hands reach inside Olivia’s incision, emerging slowly with a head, and I can’t help but giggle. “Carter’s going to be surrounded by all these dark curls,” I tell her softly as I brush a stray one back beneath her surgical cap.
Her chest heaves, wide eyes moving back and forth while she waits.