Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“ D iana , you can come into the room now.”
Almost nine hours had passed from the moment that I’d gotten the phone call about my best friend going into labor.
Nine damn hours I spent reading about all the horrible things that could happen to a woman when she was giving birth.
I’d wanted to throw up seeing phrases like “stitching layer by layer,” “closing a uterus,” and “closing a belly.” If that wasn’t bad enough, there were paragraphs dedicated to clots and a dozen other horrific things that could happen during a pregnancy that had me clamping my legs shut in agony at the airport.
My best friend was giving birth, and I was the one sweating bullets.
Everything after I got off the flight from San Antonio to San Diego went by at the speed of light.
I caught a cab to the hospital and found Vanessa’s husband pacing outside her room; this massive imposing figure who I called The Hulk had been wringing his hands.
The stress of waiting around, only to be told she was going to have an emergency C-section was one of the longest hours of my life.
They had let her husband into the room for the procedure, but I’d had to wait. Not that I thought I could handle seeing her sliced up like a Thanksgiving turkey, but I would have done it for her. And only her.
Aiden had come out what felt like a year later, his face bright and eyes glassy, and said, “She’s fine and so is the baby. You can see her once they move her to a recovery room.”
It was getting to see her that seemed like another eternity.
So when Aiden came by to get me, I started shaking again.
It had been years since I’d been anywhere near as scared and upset as I’d been then, waiting to make sure this person who I’d loved almost my entire life was going to be okay.
I hadn’t even let myself think that she wouldn’t.
It wasn’t even a little surprising that she was in a private room further away from the general population.
If a hospital could be a five-star hotel, this one would have been it.
My little Vanny, who had eaten dinner at my house almost every night while we were growing up, had come so far in life. Fancy bitch.
I thought I was okay as Aiden led me into the hospital room. It wasn’t like we hadn’t known for months she was pregnant. Obviously, it was going to happen. I had told myself I was going to keep it together for her; I wasn’t the one who’d had an emergency C-section.
But when the first thing I saw was a baby on a cart beside the bed, something in me was triggered. I sucked in a breath. Then the instant I found her on the bed, pale and looking more than a little high, all weak but somehow still smiling, I sucked in another breath.
And I blinked at her.
She blinked back at me.
I was woman enough to admit I was the one who started blubbering first.
“You have a baby!” I pretty much wailed, throwing my hands up to my face to palm my cheeks.
“I have a baby,” she agreed almost softly, tears streaming down her cheeks as she extended a hand toward me.
We both went into this crying that sounded a whole bunch like “buhuhuhu” as I walked over to her, torn between looking at my best friend and the little piece of her sleeping a foot away.
I had loved this bitch my entire life, and she was a mom. What I felt wasn’t unlike the emotions I had gone through the first time I saw my brother’s boys. It was the exact same, except this time, the reality that this was a new life seemed so much more precious than before.
“I can’t believe it,” I cried, squeezing in between the bed and the baby, aiming for her.
One of her hands went around my back and the other to the back of my head as she led me forward.
Pressing my cheek against hers, I tried to give her the best version of a hug I was capable of, not wanting to get anywhere near her stomach after the horror she’d just been through.
Her sniffles went right into my ear as she cried. “I’m so happy you’re here.”
“I’m so happy I’m here, too,” I boo-hooed into her neck. “Someone had to come and make sure you survived that.” I gestured with one hand toward the cart, not sure she even saw me since we were hugging each other.
Vanessa’s laugh was right into my ear. “ That is your nephew Sammy.”
I choked, pulling back just enough so that I could barely see her through my tears. “My nephew?” She was trying to kill me.
Her eyes were clouded, from drugs or emotions, I was sure. She nodded, gulping. “Well, who the hell else is going to be his crazy-ass aunt who takes him to see R-rated movies before his time?”
The noise that bubbled around in my throat reminded me of the sounds Louie and Josh had made when they were babies.
Unlike me, Vanessa had three older sisters.
Three bitch-cunt-twat sisters, but they were blood nonetheless.
I’d sworn a long time ago that some day before I died, I was going to cut each one of those pieces of crap for what they had done to my best friend when she was a kid.
But in that moment, I was reminded of what I had always known—we were sisters, Van and I.
Blood or not. Different races and all. She’d been the serious, quiet one who kept us out of trouble, and I had been the reckless, loud one who tried to talk her into getting into trouble. We were each other’s yin and yang.
“We’ll start with PG-13 when he’s eight,” I croaked out, leaning over her again to hug her and kiss her cheek repeatedly as we both cried and snotted on each other according to the moisture on places I couldn’t reach. “I can’t believe you really did it. You have a baby.”
“I can’t believe it either.”
I pulled back enough so we could look each other in the eyes again. “We’ve been through some shit, haven’t we?” I asked her, smiling.
Her laugh filled the space between us. “We’ve been through all kinds of shit, D,” she agreed, her voice choppy.
I was sure we both thought the same thing: it was only the beginning.
Together we had been through crushes, boyfriends, heartbreak, fights, family problems, twenty miles, thousands of miles, school, a marriage, death…
everything. She must have been thinking of those exact same things because Van, who was so much more reserved than me on a regular basis, kissed my cheek again. She squeezed my hand.
I squeezed hers right back. “There’s no one else I would rather have gone through all that shit with than you, you baby whale. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Van said.
We were all wrapped up in each other when something nudged my shoulder, and when I glanced up, my face feeling puffy and wet for the second time that day, I found Aiden standing right by me with that not-so-little baby in his arms.
“Here,” this massive, mountain of a man whispered.
Using my shoulders, I wiped at my cheeks as much as I could, and cried more as he set the baby—Sammy—in my arms. It had been a long five years since I’d held Louie for the first time.
And as I took in that little alien face, my heart swelled and swelled and swelled.
“I love him,” I told his parents, meaning each syllable.
“You chubby, little chunky monkey, I love you already.” Leaning in a little closer to take in those wrinkled, pink features, I couldn’t help but glance up at Van and puff out my cheeks.
I tilted my arms so she could see him again. “You made this. Can I have him?”
“I know.” She sniffled. “And no.”
“You too, Aiden,” I added absently, letting my request go and glancing back at the face inches from mine. Then I glanced back at Van. “This was in your vagina—”
“Diana,” she hissed without the usual amount of zing in her voice.
Looking back at Sammy, I nodded, smiling. “You aren’t the first thing I’ve touched that was in your mommy’s body—”
Vanessa made a choking sound, and I thought her husband might have, too.
She remembered. She remembered that one thing she’d made me hold in my hand that one time when we were twelve.
“But you sure are the best,” I finished whispering to him. I propped him up so she could see him and shook my head. “He would have ripped your ass wide open, Vanny. Look at this head. He has your head.”
She groaned, and I’d swore on my life The Hulk made a sound that was pretty much considered the closest thing to a laugh I’d ever heard from him.
I felt pretty pleased with myself and winked at her. “I really can’t believe you did it. He’s amazing.”
“Whoever thought, huh, Di?”
“I sure as hell didn’t,” I agreed, tearing up again, glancing at my best friend looking like shit on the bed. “Remember how after we watched The Princess Bride , we used to say we were never going to have boyfriends or get married and have kids unless it was with the actor who played Westley?”
Leaning against the bed, I could see Van glance at her husband, smiling. “I’ll never forget.”
“We were going to take turns being his wife,” I reminded her, taking in her child some more. He was such a miracle.
“You were going to get him ten months out of the year and I could have him two,” she informed me. “My mom broke up our fight when we started pulling on each other’s hair, screaming. I remember.”
“Well yeah, I was going to give you half the winter with him. That sounded fair.”
“Cheater.”
I sniffled. “Cheater? You snooze, you lose. I found him first.”
* * *
I t was exactly five days later that I found myself in bed with Vanessa.
She was on one side, I was on the other, and Baby Sammy was passed out in the middle.
We were watching television; at least that was what we had planned on doing.
After spending three days in the hospital following her C-section, she’d been released.
I’d taken Van’s car back to their house every night, and her husband had stayed at the hospital with her.