18. Hannah
— ? —
Hannah
Week Thirty-Six
I’m enormous. Exhausted. Emotional about everything. Commercials make me cry, sunsets make me cry, seeing a dog on the street makes me cry, and yesterday I burst into tears because the grocery store was out of the specific brand of pickles I wanted.
Pregnancy hormones are no joke, and the ninth month is its own country.
I can’t see my feet. I can’t sleep on either side without a fortress of pillows.
My belly button has surrendered. Strangers touch me in grocery stores like I’m public property, and last week a man gave me his seat on the bus and I cried about that too, right there, holding the pole.
I’ve also started talking to the baby constantly, which probably makes me look insane to anyone who sees me muttering to my stomach while I walk down the street. But she kicks when I talk, little flutters against my palm, and it makes me feel less alone.
“Your dad came to the appointment today,” I tell her while I’m making dinner, just pasta, nothing fancy, I’m too tired for anything elaborate.
This is our nightly ritual now, the baby and me, a full recap of the day delivered to my own stomach.
She’s the best listener in my life. Low bar, admittedly.
“He cried when he saw you on the screen. Big ugly tears, the whole thing. It was honestly a little embarrassing.”
A kick, right against my palm, her opinion delivered with feet.
“Yeah, I thought so too.”
I’m just sitting down to eat when the first cramp hits.
It’s not like the Braxton Hicks contractions I’ve been having for weeks, which are more like a tightening, uncomfortable but not painful. This is different. This is sharp, radiating from my belly through my entire body, bad enough that I have to grab the edge of the table to steady myself.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay, that was… that was something.”
Maybe I ate something bad? Maybe I’m just tired and stressed and my body is being dramatic?
Another cramp. Worse this time. I double over in my chair, my pasta forgotten.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
I’m on my feet before I fully decide to stand, my phone in my hand, my mind racing through everything I read in the pregnancy books. It’s too early. She’s not supposed to come for another four weeks. This can’t be labor. This can’t be real labor.
But it feels real. It feels very, very real.
I call Griffin before I can think better of it.
He answers on the first ring.
“Hannah? What’s wrong?”
“I think…” Another cramp hits, so intense I have to lean against the wall. “I think something’s happening. I don’t know if it’s… I’m having contractions, I think, but it’s too early…”
“I’m coming. Right now. Don’t move.”
“Griffin, it might be nothing…”
“I’m already in my car. Just stay on the phone with me, okay? Keep talking to me.”
I hear the sound of an engine starting, tires squealing. He’s going to get a speeding ticket, I think. Or worse.
“Don’t get into an accident,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I won’t. How far apart are the contractions?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been timing them. I just…” Another one hits. “Fuck. Okay. That one was maybe two minutes after the last one?”
“Okay. That’s okay. That could be false labor. Braxton Hicks can come close together sometimes. Are you drinking enough water?”
“Are you seriously asking me about my hydration right now?”
“Dehydration can trigger contractions. Did you eat today?”
“I was trying to, before all this started.”
“Okay. Okay, I’m almost there. Just breathe, okay? Deep breaths.”
“I am breathing. Kind of.”
“Deeper. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“Did you read a book or something?”
“Several, actually. And about forty articles. And I watched a few YouTube videos that probably weren’t medically accurate but seemed helpful at the time.”
Despite everything, I laugh. It comes out more like a wheeze, but still. “You’ve been doing research?”
“Of course I have. What did you think I was doing all day while you were pretending I didn’t exist?”
“I wasn’t pretending you didn’t…” Another cramp cuts me off. “Okay, I really need to stop talking.”
“I’m pulling into your building now. Which apartment?”
“Three-B. The door’s unlocked.”
“It shouldn’t be unlocked. What if someone breaks in?”
“Griffin, I’m having contractions. I don’t care about home security right now.”
I hear his car door slam, his footsteps on pavement, then on stairs. Thirty seconds later, my apartment door crashes open and he’s there, in sweatpants and yesterday’s t-shirt, his hair a disaster, his face pale with fear.
“I’m here.” He’s at my side immediately, arm around my waist, taking my weight. “I’ve got you. How are you feeling?”
“Like something’s trying to claw its way out of my abdomen.”
“Okay. Hospital. Now.”
“What if it’s nothing?”
“Then we’ll look stupid together. Best-case scenario, honestly. I would love nothing more tonight than to look extremely stupid. Come on.”
He helps me out of the apartment and down the stairs, moving carefully, one step at a time. My elderly neighbor pokes her head out of her door as we pass, the one who always asks about the baby when I see her in the hallway.
“Is everything all right?” she calls.
“Fine!” Griffin shouts back. “Probably! Hopefully!”
“Very reassuring,” I mutter.
“I’m doing my best here.” And he is. That’s the thing about Griffin that I keep colliding with lately.
He’s doing his terrified, over-researched, notebook-carrying best, and his best used to be reserved for quarterly earnings, and now it’s aimed entirely at a woman who divorced him and a person the size of a butternut squash.
His car is parked at an angle that would definitely get a ticket under normal circumstances, half on the curb, hazard lights blinking, driver’s door hanging open.
He didn’t even close his door. Nine minutes from his tower to my walk-up, which is not possible unless he treated every light on the way as a suggestion, and he didn’t close his door.
He helps me into the passenger seat and runs around to the driver’s side.
“Seatbelt,” I say automatically, seven years of managing this man apparently surviving the divorce intact.
“Are you serious right now?”
“Safety first.”
He stares at me for a second, then laughs, a slightly hysterical sound, and buckles his seatbelt. “You’re incredible, you know that?”
“I’ve been told.”
He pulls out of the alley doing a speed I decide not to notice, one hand on the wheel, one hand still in mine, and it occurs to me somewhere between the second and third contraction that I haven’t held his hand in a car since the night of the Myer function, when he kissed my knuckles and told me I was the only woman for him.
I was so angry that night. I’d give a lot to be only that angry now.
He drives too fast, running yellow lights and taking corners sharper than he should.
His hand finds mine across the center console and holds on tight.
I squeeze back, because right now, in this moment, I don’t care about the divorce or the papers or any of it.
Right now I just need someone to hold my hand.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Terrified.”
“Me too.”
“You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to tell me everything’s going to be fine.”
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Yeah, I didn’t really believe me either.”
The hospital is a blur of fluorescent lights and paperwork and nurses asking me questions I can barely focus on because another contraction is hitting and I want to scream.
Griffin handles most of it, gives them my name and insurance information and medical history while I grip his hand hard enough to leave marks.
They put me in a room. They hook me up to monitors. They check my cervix, which is exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds.
And then we wait.
“The contractions are irregular,” the nurse tells us, a calm, competent woman who’s probably seen a thousand panicking almost-parents. “That’s usually a sign of false labor. But we want to monitor you for a bit, just to be safe.”
“False labor,” I repeat, and the relief comes in two waves, first for her, safe, staying put, still baking, and then, absurdly, a small gray thread of disappointment that I examine and refuse to name. “So I’m not actually…?”
“Probably not. But your body is practicing. Getting ready for the real thing. It’s totally normal.”
“Normal,” Griffin echoes. “So she’s okay? The baby’s okay?”
“Heartbeat’s strong, mom’s vitals are good. I think you two just got a preview of coming attractions.”
She leaves, and Griffin and I are alone in the dim room, the beeping of monitors the only sound.
“False labor,” I say again. “I can’t believe I made you rush over here for false labor.”
“I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t want to rush over here.” He’s still holding my hand. I haven’t pulled away. “You called me. That’s… that means something, Hannah.”
“It means I panicked and you were the first person I thought of.” Which is a confession wearing a dismissal as a coat, and by the small, careful stillness that comes over him, he knows it too.
“That still means something.”
I don’t have a response to that.
We sit in silence for a while, listening to the monitors, watching the readouts that show our daughter’s heartbeat, strong and steady.
Somewhere down the hall a real labor is happening, a woman’s voice rising and falling, a nurse calling out encouragement, and then, faint but unmistakable, the furious little wail of somebody brand new.
Griffin and I look at each other in the dim light and neither of us says anything, because in a few weeks that sound is going to belong to us, and there aren’t words for that yet.
“I was so scared,” Griffin says quietly. “When you called. I’ve never driven that fast in my life. I ran three red lights. I’m probably going to get tickets.”
“I’ll pay for them.”
“You will not.”
“You drove here in the middle of the night because I panicked over nothing. The least I can do is pay your traffic tickets.”
“You didn’t panic over nothing. And you called me.” He turns to look at me, his face serious in the dim light. “You could have called your mom. Or a friend. Or an ambulance. But you called me.”
“Don’t read too much into it.”
“I’m not. I’m just… grateful. That you still trust me enough to call when you’re scared.”
I want to tell him trust had nothing to do with it. I want to tell him it was pure reflex, muscle memory, seven years of his number being the answer to every emergency. But we’d both know I was lying about at least half of that, and I’m too tired to build the lie properly, so I let it stand.
I don’t know what to say to that. So I don’t say anything.
Around 5 a.m., they discharge me with instructions to rest, drink water, and come back if the contractions start again. Griffin drives me home, walks me to my door, helps me inside.
And then we’re standing in my entryway, the sun just starting to lighten the sky outside the window, and something feels different. Charged.
“I should go,” he says, but he doesn’t move.
“You should.”
“I don’t want to.”
His hand lifts, hovers, then lands on my belly. She kicks against his palm, strong, defiant, very much awake despite the hour.
“Hey, baby girl,” he murmurs, bending toward my belly, and his voice goes somewhere I’ve never heard it go, lower and softer than boardrooms, softer than midnight. “You gave us quite a scare tonight.”
Another kick.
“She’s feisty,” I say.
“She gets it from you.”
“She’d better.”
He’s standing so close. Close enough that I can smell his cologne, the same one he’s worn since college.
Close enough that I can see the exhaustion in his eyes, the worry lines that have deepened over the past few months.
Close enough that I can feel the heat of his body, the pull that’s been there since the beginning.
“Hannah.” My name on his lips, soft as a prayer.
His forehead drops toward mine. I let it. Our foreheads touch, and we stand there, breathing each other in, his hand still spread over our daughter.
His mouth is an inch from mine.
One breath. That’s the width of the distance. One breath, and every cell in my body that spent eight years loving him votes yes, an overwhelming majority, a landslide.
Six months ago, I would have kissed him. I would have pulled him close and lost myself in him, like I always did. I would have let his body apologize for all the things his words couldn’t fix.
But I’m not that woman anymore.
I turn my head at the last second.
His lips brush my cheek instead, and he exhales, a shuddering breath with a crack running through it.
“This doesn’t change anything, Griffin.” My voice is barely a whisper. “I’m not ready.”
“I know.” He doesn’t pull away. His forehead stays against my temple, his hand still on my belly. “I know you’re not.”
“Then…”
“It changes everything for me.” His voice is wrecked. Raw. “Every single thing. I just… I need you to know that.”
I close my eyes.
I don’t push him away.
We stand there for what feels like hours, balanced on the edge of something neither of us can name. His breath warm on my face. His hand warm on my belly. Our daughter kicking between us, oblivious to the complicated history of her parents.
Finally, reluctantly, he steps back, and the space where he was goes cold all at once.
“I should let you rest,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Call me if you need anything. I don’t care what time it is. I don’t care if it’s another false alarm. Just… call me.”
“I will.”
He backs toward the door, his eyes never leaving my face. He looks like he wants to say more, I love you, probably, or I’m sorry, or one of the other things he’s said a hundred times in the past few months.
Instead, he just says: “Goodnight, Hannah.”
“Goodnight, Griffin.”
He leaves.
I watch through the window as he gets in his car. He sits there awhile, his head bowed over the steering wheel. Then he starts the engine and drives away.
I press my hand to my cheek, where his lips touched.
I press my other hand to my belly, where our daughter is still kicking.
And I wonder if I’m making a terrible mistake by pushing him away.
Or if I’m making a worse one by wanting him to stay.