Chapter 37
The Following Spring
Bea
“I told you it would work,” Silas says over my shoulder. He digs his knuckles into my back, and I let out a guttural moan.
“You want a fucking medal?” I snap before my temper slingshots out of me, trailing after the words like a kite tail. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean it at all,” I whimper. I do a cumbersome pivot and let my forehead fall into his chest.
“I know, baby, it’s okay.” He kisses a small smile into the part of my hair, then rubs harder and helps me sway from side to side. “Glad I got to make you feel good before this, at least,” he says. “Wish I could help more.”
When I look up, I see some of my pain mirrored in his expression.
His mouth pinches beneath his mustache. Until this morning, and despite his newly adopted Dad Look working extremely well for me, I have hardly wanted to be touched for the past two weeks.
I’m nine days overdue and a month beyond feeling like anything miraculous.
But Silas started investing in foreplay via foot rubs and leaping at every one of my food cravings all week, then kissed and massaged and whispered compliments at me all morning until I was stretching beneath him and pulling him into me.
Two orgasms and one breakfast later, contractions started.
Five hours later, I was admitted. My water broke at hour ten—two hours ago, now.
I tilt my head to press a short kiss to his lips, but a contraction swells up before it bears down on me again.
It builds and builds and builds, and I wonder if this is how they came up with the name for the jaws of life.
It has to be. That is what is happening inside of me, I’m positive.
The pain rises until I’m sure it’ll take me under, my head won’t ever break the surface again, and then suddenly, it does.
I babble to myself while Silas makes affirming noises.
“See, just have to remember that when the next one comes. They’re waves.
They break every time. I’ll think it won’t break, but it suddenly will, and I’ll get a breather. ”
Selina, my labor and delivery nurse, walks in at one point when Silas and I are wrapped in the world’s worst slow dance, and jokes about this being how we got into this ordeal in the first place. It provides a quick moment of reprieve. Silas and I share a private, mirthful look.
“The Byrds and the Bea” group chat blows up until Silas gives them the okay to come to the hospital. Indy will stay at Sage and Fisher’s with baby Luna so they can join, too.
When Bonnie and my mom step into my hospital room, it’s the first time I cry, like being in this primal state has reduced me to a girl who just wants her mom to make it better. They both seem satisfied with whatever Silas is doing and leave us for the waiting room after a bit.
I make Silas sing to me, right up against my ear. I tell him to stop abruptly, like I can’t take one more second of it. I get weepy and ask him to start again.
Selina checks me for the umpteenth time and offers to call the anesthesiologist. A beast has taken up residence in my skin. My voice comes out like a growl when I look at Silas and say, “No. No more numbing, right?”
It’s the first time he truly cracks and loses his composure. “Bea, honey, please. I know you said you didn’t want one and you told me to keep you strong, but . . . Christ, Bea. I’m so full of shit. I get numbed at the dentist!”
It seems impossible that I could be in this much agony and laugh at the same time, but somehow, I do. A raspy, gasping one. I tell Selina no. Silas nods and squares his shoulders, ready to bear whatever he can for me.
An hour later, I regret it more than I’ve ever regretted anything, including the microbangs I tried at thirteen. I am so tired of being in pain. I’m so, so tired. I want it to be done. But Silas keeps on holding me up when I can’t take it anymore. He never leaves my side.
An unknown number of hours later, something is approaching, and I know it’s .
. . it’s a vortex of pain. A spinning whirlpool I’m convinced will really rip me under this time and never let me go, and I’m sweating and groaning and begging Selina to get the epidural Messiah or whoever they are and she’s telling me it’s too late, and just before I explode into a sob, Silas makes me look into his eyes.
“Hey, Red,” he says. “Fuck Picasso, right?”
A long, lowing moan before I can reply. “Fuck. Picasso.”
My body knows what it needs, and I’m rocking and scooting myself into place, readying myself to slip into that final ring of pain.
The doctor and nurses are suiting up around me, and soon enough I’m pushing.
I’m pushing like I can turn my soul inside out, until the doctor asks Silas if he wants to catch her, and even in the fugue of it all, I think, Yes, there’s no one better.
There is no one I’d rather have right there to catch me.
And then I hit that point in the pain where I’m certain I’ll never come up, but this time, I know I will.
I know what’s on the other side of this, and just like every wave ever has, this one will get pulled back, too.
It snaps and flattens like a tether, and there she is, in Silas’s big, capable hands, brown-haired and squalling and wriggling and bloody and the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
She’s my greatest pain and my enduring love and a whole entire person I get to know.
Our catch of a lifetime. She cries and the room vibrates with awed laughter, because crying means being alive.
To live is to cry. Her exit from my body is our first goodbye and our first hello.
Her dad lays all eight pounds of her on my chest and kisses and cries into my sweaty hair, telling me, Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And even as she’s being scrubbed and jostled, she calms against my skin.
I feel her heartbeat in her chest, the pulse in her body passed down and birthed from love.
Our eyes meet, and my universe sprouts new stars.
“Hello, Sailor Byrd,” I tell our daughter. “Welcome to the world.”