46. Graham
GRAHAM
I wanted to be with her for this, but I also accepted weeks ago that I might not be, so I already had a contingency plan in place.
I call Paul’s cell. He will drop everything to get her safely to the hospital, and I don’t trust this to some Uber with two other passengers and a driver who can’t follow directions.
He has her in his car within three minutes. Mark comes along, too, just in case they need help.
They make it to the hospital in record time, but it takes me far longer. Traffic is snarled, and I’ve now got texts from Mark, Paul, and Jacobson—keeping tabs from his post at the building until his replacement gets in at nine—asking me where the hell I am.
I arrive at Labor and Delivery, frazzled and worried sick.
Yes, I want to be there when our daughter is born, but mostly…
I just want to see my wife again. The past two weeks have felt like a lifetime.
Mark and Paul both leap from their seats and join me at the front desk.
An Indian doctor standing there turns when he hears me ask for her.
“You’re the father?” he asks with a small, quizzical smile.
“That’s good. That’s very good. I’m Dr. Patel. I was just up here checking on her.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“This isn’t my area, but I’m sure one of the nurses can take you back and get you some scrubs. Rachel?”
A nurse pops up from a chair, and I nod to Paul and Mark. They nod back, worried and hopeful at once.
She waits while I change into scrubs, then walks me down the hall to Keeley. “She’s not quite thirty-seven weeks,” I tell the nurse just before we enter. “How big a deal is that?”
She shakes her head and gestures to the room, which is full of laughing hospital staff. “As you can see from these idiots, who are violating the rules and should not be here, it’s not a big deal at all.”
I shove my way through, expecting to find Keeley cracking jokes and holding court, but her gaze is strained when it meets mine…and relieved, deeply relieved.
She needed me here, and she needed me while we were apart. God, I hate the way this has all unfolded. I hate that the past two weeks ever happened at all.
“Hey,” she says, her voice quieter than I expected, her face less joyful. Keeley, who loves drama and celebration more than anyone I know, is pale and tense.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Her eyes close and she shakes her head. “I’m about to have another contraction, and they’re really bad. I thought women were kind of overdramatizing things, but…they weren’t.”
Only Keeley would think centuries of women were exaggerating the pain of childbirth.
She squeezes my hand, her eyes fall shut, and her mouth moves as if she’s silently counting.
“You’ve got this, bestie!” shouts a woman in scrubs. Someone else cheers. I think I’m going to fucking kill all of them.
Her breath explodes when the contraction finally ends and her grip eases. She looks exhausted as her gaze meets mine.
“Do you actually want all these people in here?”
“Well,” she says, “no, but they just want to celebrate and—”
I stand. “Everyone? I’m this kid’s father. Nice to meet you. Now get the fuck out unless you’re assigned to this room.”
People glare at me and glance at each other, undoubtedly thinking “what did Keeley ever see in this asshole?” I don’t blame them. It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times.
But they leave, and once the room is empty, aside from a lone nurse currently taking Keeley’s vitals, her sigh is pure relief.
“They’re all going to hate you,” she says. Her eyes fall closed. It seems early in the process for her to be this tired.
“Like I give a shit,” I begin.
“You need to give a shit,” she says with a too-small smile. “We can’t piss them off in case we ever decide to have another one.”
My heart stops. I didn’t write that letter hoping to change her mind about us, but that she wants me here and is talking about a future us has me hoping for it anyway. “You mean…together? We’d stay together?”
“God, Graham, you haven’t already changed your mind, right? I mean, you only sent that email last night.”
I can’t speak for a moment. I lift her hand and press my face to its back. “No, I haven’t changed my mind,” I say. “I just thought…”
I don’t finish the sentence. I can’t.
“People aren’t quite as unforgiving as you seem to think,” she says. “And besides, we both know I can’t afford a Mariah Carey closet on my own.”
I squeeze her hand. “I’m so sorry, Keeley. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I know,” she whispers.
Her eyes close, and I wait for them to open so she can tell me about all the things she wants in her new closet, or describe the outlandish Real Housewives mural she’d like to paint on our daughter’s wall.
It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s fallen asleep.
Keeley, in one of the most exciting moments of her life, has fallen asleep. It’s wrong. It’s wrong for her in particular, but aren’t women in labor, at the very least, supposed to be red-faced and hyper-alert, screaming obscenities at the guy who did this to them?
I look at the nurse on the other side of Keeley, who’s writing something in a chart. “Is this normal?”
She glances at me with a frown. “Her blood pressure is really high. We gave her something but it’s not helping. Dr. Seever is on the way.”
Keeley wakes with the next contraction, squeezing my hand through it, watching the second hand of the clock like it’s her only lifeline. She exhales in relief as it ends and her gaze turns to mine, followed by another weak smile.
“I’m glad,” she says.
“Glad?”
“I’m glad you had a story. Mark said you would. I had stories, too, but I think they were my mom’s stories.” Her eyes close. “I’d rather have my own.”
I look up at the nurse, on the cusp of demanding she find someone who’s available now, but I don’t need to.
She hits a button on the machine next to Keeley. “Get the attending,” she announces. “Her pressure’s up and I need more hands now .”
Within seconds, a woman I’ve never seen before walks in, with several others behind her. She looks at the monitor and after a hushed conversation with the nurse, she looks over her shoulder to a tech behind her.
“We’ve got to get this kid out,” she says. “Open an OR.”
Keeley’s eyes open slowly, as if by force, and she swallows.
“Keeley, I’m Dr. Asif,” the woman says. “The mag isn’t controlling your blood pressure, and the baby’s in danger. We need to do a section right away.”
The old Keeley would make a joke here, something about bikini season or her vagina. But she just nods. Everyone is moving, someone’s on the phone issuing urgent demands and things are being unclipped. The only person in the entire room who is still and settled…is Keeley.
No, not settled. Resigned . She reaches for my hand. “Graham,” she says quietly, “you’re going to be such a good dad, and she’s so lucky to have you—”
“Stop,” I demand. “You’re fine.”
“I’m sorry,” says the nurse. “We need to leave now.”
They push the bed from the room and Keeley grips my hand as I walk alongside her down the hall. “Listen to me, okay? I love you. I love this baby, and I don’t regret any of it. Convincing you to marry me is smartest thing I ever did.”
I open my mouth to tell her to stop talking like this. To tell her she’s going to be fine, and that the truth is that I was the one who wanted all of this, that I was the one who convinced her to go to Vegas. But we’ve reached a set of double doors and a nurse moves in front of me.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “They have to put her under, so you can’t come back with her.”
I look from her to Keeley. There is so much I need to say and there’s just no time. “I love you,” I whisper.
Tear well in her eyes, but her smile is quiet, and peaceful. “I know.”
The doors open and she’s gone. Someone leads me to the waiting room, and I go blindly, struck by the way we just said goodbye. It felt... final .
I call my mom, and Ben, and Keeley’s father, and within thirty minutes, they’re all here.
“I didn’t even know she was pregnant,” her father says, taking the seat across from mine.
“You’re lucky I called you at all, after the way you let your wife treat her,” I reply.
Harsh, perhaps, but true. And he fucking knows it. He simply nods, and then buries his face in his hands.
Gemma barks at Paul to move and takes the seat beside me. Her hand slips through mine.
“It all happened so fast,” I whisper. “There was so much I should have told her.”
She squeezes my hand. “I’m sure she knew.”
Staff from other parts of the hospital are trickling in now, huddled around the nurses’ desk, whispering, and I don’t know what it all means, but it doesn’t seem good.
Julie enters Labor and Delivery at a jog and nods to me as she heads to the nurses’ station.
She converses with someone and then takes a phone call, her face increasingly grim before she walks in my direction.
I jump to my feet and Gemma is right behind me, followed by Ben, Keeley’s dad, and the guys from the building.
“They’re still in there,” she says, wiping her arm across her forehead.
“The baby’s in the NICU. Nothing to worry about but she was breathing a little fast so they’re keeping an eye on her.
But Keeley…” She swallows. “Graham, her blood pressure went too high during the delivery. She had a seizure.”
Ben’s hand lands on my shoulder, keeping me in place.
“A seizure,” I repeat.
She nods. “I’d like to tell you that she’s going to be okay, but…”
“But?” I ask weakly.
Her gaze meets mine. “I’m sorry. There’s no way to tell.”
I want to ask how bad things might be, but I already know. I already knew , simply from the worry on the staff’s faces.
“Can I see her?”
She isn’t meeting my eye. “Not yet,” she says. “They’re still finishing up. They’ll want to make sure she’s stable first.”
Julie returns to the nurses’ station, and Keeley’s father begins to cry, as if he already knows what’s going to happen. I just sit, feeling numb. All these responsibilities I once thought I didn’t want…now I’m not sure how I’ll continue to exist without them.
It feels like hours have passed by the time Dr. Asif appears, quietly conferring with Julie before turning to me. Her face is strained as I propel out of my seat and toward them.
“Congratulations,” she says. “You have a beautiful five-pound, nine-ounce baby girl.”
She pulls off her surgical cap and uses it to wipe her brow, her shoulders sagging.
“Keeley?” I can barely get the question out. “Is Keeley okay?”
“It was a close one,” she says, “but you still have a beautiful wife as well.”
Everyone cheers. All I can do is grip the counter as my knees threaten to buckle. For a minute there, I really saw the world the way Keeley has, for most of her life. It was terrifying.